I consider it at once as the knell of the Union. It is hushed, indeed, for the moment. But this is a reprieve only, not a final sentence. I can say, with conscious truth, that there is not a man on earth who would sacrifice more than I would to relieve us from this heavy reproach, in a practicable way. But as it is, we have the wolf by the ears, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go.
Justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other. . . .
I regret that I am now to die in the belief, that the useless sacrifice of themselves by the generation of 1776, to acquire self-government and happiness to their country, is to be thrown away by the unwise and unworthy passions of their sons, and that my only consolation is to be, that I live not to weep over it.