Editorial in Cincinnati Commercial

A surrender to secession is the suicide of government. If we succumb to secession now – if we suffer these insurgents and usurpers to dictate to us the terms of a national dismemberment, our national government is gone hopelessly, irretrievably gone. We shall never more have peace or public order at home – we shall never more lift our head among the nations of earth. The great battle which is now joined, is to prove whether the republic founded on the will of the people, is capable of exerting power enough to enforce its laws and maintain its existence or whether it contains within itself the seeds of its own destruction.