With the Union my best and dearest earthly hopes are entwined.

With the Union my best and dearest earthly hopes are entwined.

In expressing briefly my views upon an important subject which has recently agitated the nation..., I fervently hope that the question is at rest and that no sectional or ambitious or fanatical excitement may again threaten the durability of our institutions.

I speak of the war as fruitless; for it is clear that, prosecuted upon the basis of the proclamations of September 22d and September 24th, 1862, prosecuted, as I must understand these proclamations, to say nothing of the kindred blood which has followed, upon the theory of emancipation, devastation, subjugation, it cannot fail to be fruitless in every thing except the harvest of woe which it is ripening for what was once the peerless republic.

A Republic without parties is a complete anomaly. The histories of all popular governments show absurd is the idea of their attempting to exist without parties.

The dangers of a concentration of all power in the general government of a confederacy so vast as ours are too obvious to be disregarded.

I find the remark, "Tis distance lends enchantment to the view" is no less true of the political than of the natural world.