This issue is the only real one, and in my judgment all else should be deferred to it.

War alone can decide it, and it is the only question now left for us as a people to decide.

Can we whip the South?
If we can, our numerical majority has both the natural and constitutional right to govern them.

If we cannot whip them, they contend for the natural right to select their own government, and they have the argument.

Our armies must prevail over theirs; our officers, marshals, and courts, must penetrate into the innermost recesses of their land, before we have the natural right to demand their submission.
I would banish all minor questions, assert the broad doctrine that as a nation the United States has the right, and also the physical power, to penetrate to every part of our national domain, and that we will do it--that we will do it in our own time and in our own way; that it makes no difference whether it be in one year, or two, or ten, or twenty; that we will remove and destroy every obstacle, if need be, take every life, every acre of land, every particle of property, every thing that to us seems proper; that we will not cease till the end is attained; that all who do not aid us are enemies, and that we will not account to them for our acts.