again, What if it does not happen? What if Jefferson Davis takes your cessation of hostilities with a view to laugh at your Convention and other peaceable means to restore the Union? And this he is most likely, nay, almost certain to do, for peace without the condition of reunion is just what he wants, and a Convention and reunion is just what he does not want. Well, what then? Will you tacitly acquiesce in the establishment of the Southern Confederacy? How can you, since you tell us that yon are faithful to the Union? Or will you resume the war? How can you, since you declare that the experiment of war has proved a failure, and that “justice, humanity, liberty, and the public welfare” demand its cessation? What, then, in the name of common sense, will you do? Here we look upon a jumble of contradictions so glaring that our heads begin to reel, and we wonder how it could happen to the whole wisdom of a great party in solemn Convention assembled to hatch out so bottomless an absurdity. [Laughter and applause.]
The gentlemen who come with so amazing a proposition before the country will, indeed, tell us that Jefferson Davis and his people may agree to terms of peace on the basis of the Union. Pray, where did they obtain their information? We have some means of ascertaining the sentiments of the rebel government and of those men who make public opinion in that part of the country. We have the official enunciations of their chiefs; we have the sayings of their public speakers; we have their public papers; we have a large quantity of information from private sources published in the newspapers of our States. All these things are before the people; everybody that has eyes may see, and that has ears may hear them. And now I appeal to any man that has kept the run of the times, did he ever see or hear the least indication of a willingness on the part of the rebel government or their
