I would approach them without any weapons on my
person. I would not shoot at them. I would make a speech to them.
"'Gentlemen,' I would say, 'here's the chance of your life to win life's
chief prize. Now you are peasant soldiers. You have the opportunity to
become citizen kings. We are all kings here. Here the least of you can
take a rank much higher than that of any General in your army. He can
become a sovereign in a republic.'
"I think they would hurrah for me, not harm me, after they had heard my
speech.
"Striving for peace, we shall become so powerful that if war comes we
shall be invincible. Peace, not war, makes riches; the rich nation is
the powerful nation.
"Perhaps I was as much a peace man in my youth as I am now, but when I
was asked, during the civil war, to organize a corps of telegraph
operators and railroad conductors and engineers and take them to
Washington, I considered it the greatest of all privileges to obey the
order.
"I was the last man to get on the last train leaving Burkes Station,
after Bull Run, and, now, if the country ever should be invaded, I would
be, I hope, one of the first to rush to meet the enemy--but I think my
haste would be to convert, not to kill, him.
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