"I shall be blamed more for venturing to question Lincoln's policy of subjugation. He had proclaimed with great power and in the most unmistakable language in Congress that "any portion of any people had a perfect right to throw off their old government and establish a new one." But now, instead of standing strictly on the defensive, or attempting by diplomacy to settle the conflict which had become virtually international, he entered upon a war of conquest.

I do not blame him for refusing to exchange prisoners, nor President Davis for allowing them to starve and freeze. Both were right, if war is right. It was expedient that thirty, fifty, or a hundred thousand of us should perish, or be rendered physically incapable of bearing arms again. The "deep damnation of the taking off" was due not to individual depravity but to military necessity."

["Deep damnation of the taking off"- I had to look this one up, it's from Shakespears Macbeth, and it part of a phrase that means..."The great blindness of the righteous and good is that they think their goodness should absolve them from the injustices practiced by others.", which makes sense after finding the meaning.] D.U.

Homer B. Sprague, Ph.D., President of the University of North Dakota, Principal of the Connecticut Normal School, member of the Connecticut Legislature, Yale; Bvt. Colonel 13th Conn. Vols., Survivor of Danville Prison, Virginia, Abolitionist. 1915.

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David Upton