As an American citizen, I take great pride in my country, her prosperity and her institutions, and would defend any State if her rights were invaded. But I can anticipate no greater calamity for the country than the dissolution of the Union. It would be an accumulation of all the evils we complain of, and I am willing to sacrifice everything but honor for its preservation. I hope, therefore, that all constitutional means will be exhausted before there is a resort to force. Secession is nothing but revolution.
He also wrote this:
The framers of our Constitution never exhausted so much labor, wisdom, and forbearance in its formation, and surrounded it with so many guards and securities, if it were intended to be broken by every member of the Confederacy at will. It is intended for perpetual union, so expressed in the preamble, and for the establishment of a government (not a compact) which can only be dissolved by revolution, or by the consent of all the people in convention assembled.
It has often been said that given the economic trajectory of the South and North at the time, had the war broken out 20 years before or after 1860, the outcome would have been different.
Interesting. I've never heard anyone say that before. I would disagree.
I'd go farther than that.
Had the South seceded in 1850, it would have been successful. The railroad network in the 1860s was just barely extensive enough to support the logistics of invading the South. Also the disproportion in industrial power and population was a lot less. War would have ended in fairly short order with the North recognizing it couldn't defeat the South.
In 1870, OTOH, the disproportion would have been much greater, and the war would have ended more quickly with a Union victory.
IMO, the war was fought during the only period when we could have had a long, bloody war. YMMV