Among the loyal people that I
represent, there are no half-patriots.
"Already the Rebellion has cost us much, even to our undoing; we are
content, if need be, to give up the rest, to suppress it. We have stood
by you from the beginning of this struggle, and we mean to stand by you,
God willing, till the end of it.
"I did not vote for the Resolution to which you allude, solely for the
reason that I was absent at the Capital of my own State. It is right.
"Should any of the Slave States think proper to terminate that
Institution, as several of them, I understand, or at least some of their
citizens propose, justice and a generous comity require that the Country
should interpose to aid in lessening the burden, public and private,
occasioned by so radical a change in its social and industrial
relations.
"I will not now speculate upon the effect, at home or abroad, of the
adoption of your policy, nor inquire what action of the Rebel leaders
has rendered something of the kind important. Your whole administration
gives the highest assurance that you are moved, not so much from a
desire to see all men everywhere made free, as from a higher desire to
preserve free institutions for the benefit of men already free; not to
make Slaves, Freemen, but to prevent Freemen from being made Slaves; not
to destroy an Institution, which a portion of us only consider bad, but
to save institutions which we all alike consider good.
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