I believe there was no mode
short of a miracle more stupendous than any recorded in Holy Writ that
could in our time, or in a century, or in any time, have brought about
the abolition of slavery in America, but the suicide which the South has
committed and the war which it has begun.
Sir, it is a measureless calamity,--this war. I said the Russian war was
a measureless calamity, and yet many of your leaders and friends told
you that it was a just war to maintain the integrity of Turkey, some
thousands of miles off. Surely the integrity of your own country at your
own doors must be worth as much as the integrity of Turkey. Is not this
war the penalty which inexorable justice exacts from America, North and
South, for the enormous guilt of cherishing that frightful iniquity of
slavery for the last eighty years? I do not blame any man here who
thinks the cause of the North hopeless and the restoration of the Union
impossible. It may be hopeless; the restoration may be impossible. You
have the authority of the Chancellor of the Exchequer on that point. The
Chancellor of the Exchequer, as a speaker, is not surpassed by any man
in England, and he is a great statesman; he believes the cause of the
North to be hopeless; that their enterprise cannot succeed.
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