Concord Democratic Standard, May 4, 1861

It is proper that the position of every man, and every political press, should, in the present crisis, be distinctly defined. We have no hesitation in defining ours.

While we acknowledge the duty of allegiance and fidelity to the Government of our country, by whomsoever administered, we are against coercion. We are for peace. The South, which, in this scandalous civil war, will include every slaveholding State, cannot,be reconquered. Her sons may be defeated on the field of battle; her cities destroyed; her fields laid waste; but they will not then be conquered. If defeated, they will flee to their mountain fastnesses and their morasses, and still carry on the war, until ultimately their invaders will be driven from their soil. They never will be conquered. Then why make war upon them? Why sacrifice thousands of precious lives and hundreds of millions of money, when in the end it will avail nothing?

No; let every true patriot in the land—republican, Whig, or democrat—demand that this fratricidal strife shall cease. Let our Southern brethren go, if they cannot remain with us except by coercion at the point of the bayonet and the cannon's mouth.

We are for the peace policy. When our land is filled with widows and orphans, and our homes draped with mourning, as they will be in two short years, and we then find our brothers of the same race still unconquered, all will be for peace. Then why not make it now before all these tremendous sacrifices have been made?

We are for our country, or what remains of it. We are for its brilliant and glorious emblem—the stars and stripes. Its glory should never be bedimmed by bathing its folds in the blood of brothers. We are for maintaining the glory of this flag on the soil of our own country. We are not for the invasion of the South. We are for the defense of the North. If our brethren of the South invade the North, we are for repelling them. We are for defending the city of Washington until. Maryland shall secede. As long as that State shall remain in the Northern Union, we are for defending the integrity of her soil, and that embraces the city of Washington. If she secedes, it will be useless even to defend Washington.

Such is our position. And this should be the position of the Democracy of the North. It probably will be; and not only their position, but that of hundreds of thousands of Republicans, before this war shall have been prosecuted two years.