I have already said enough to make it evident that as long as the rebels have confidence in their ability to win ultimate success, they will insist on their terms and not think of accepting ours. We must therefore shake that confidence. How shake it? By a display of superior power, and an inflexible determination to carry on the struggle to the bitter end. That will make them count the cost and consider. But what if we show signs of a flagging spirit, of a shaky determination? What if we act as if we had lost our assurance of our ability to achieve success in the game of war? They will take new hope and courage. And is not an offer of a compromise, that is, an offer to abandon some essential point determined in the election of 1860, an indication of a flagging and uncertain spirit. The matter resolves itself into this: The rebels will not think of accepting a compromise, until their prospects are so obscured and their power so reduced, that they would be obliged to submit without it. Thus it will be no mare difficult to beat them into submission, than it will be to beat them into compromise; and that accomplished, the compromise will be superfluous. But the offer of a compromise before that point is reached, will be not only superfluous but dangerous; for by giving evidence of a flagging of our own spirits, it will bring new courage and hope to the rebels, and thus prolong the struggle and postpone the moment when a settlement can be effected. [Applause.]
But this is not all. I contend that a compromise in our case, even if it could be effected, would be utterly inadmissible as a measure of peace. [Great applause.]
The word compromise has acquired a certain traditional prestige in our political history, so that many people pronounce it with a singular superstitional awe, and think nothing is done well that is not done by compromise. It is said that the Constitution is founded on compromise--
