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my old position; in the other you expressed a hope that the arrangement I had made^[1] might turn out well and happily. Well if "position" means the holding of sound political opinions, and making those opinions acceptable to men of sound character, I certainly do maintain my position; but if "position" consists in the ability to give practical effect to your opinions, or even merely to defend them with freedom of speech, why, then I have no vestige of position left me, and we are doing exceedingly well if we can but school ourselves to endure with self-control those evils, some of which have already befallen us, and others are hanging over us; and it is hard to do so in a war of this sort,^[2] the issue of which on one side threatens massacre, and on the other slavery.

At this dangerous crisis I feel some slight consolation, when I recall that I foresaw all this, at the time when I was seriously alarmed even at our successes and not at our failures alone, and saw how great was the risk of submitting a point of constitutional right to the arbitrament of arms. For supposing that, by means of those arms, the party I had been drawn to join, not by any desire for war, but by the hope of arranging a peace, had proved victorious, I was none the less aware how sanguinary was bound to be the victory of men so angry, so rapacious, and so arrogant; and if on the other hand they were to be defeated, how crushing was bound to be the ruin of my fellow-citizens, some of them men of the highest rank, others of the highest character also, but men who, when I foretold all this and took the wisest measures for their safety, were more anxious that I should be regarded as showing undue timidity than proper prudence.