Understanding the spirit of our institutions to aim at the elevation of men, I am opposed to whatever tends to degrade them.

I have some little notoriety for commiserating the oppressed condition of the negro; and I should be strangely inconsistent if I could favor any project for curtailing the existing rights of white men, even though born in different lands, and speaking different languages from myself.

As to the matter of fusion, I am for it, if it can be had on Republican grounds; and I am not for it on any other terms.

A fusion on any other terms would be as foolish and unprincipled.

It would lose the whole North, while the common enemy would still carry the whole South.