Rives had not intended to do much speaking at the Peace Convention, but as it grew deadlocked, with each side increasingly convinced of its own virtue, he felt he could no longer just sit and watch. At one point he leapt to his feet and launched into a ninety-minute wholly extemporaneous plea for North and South to find a way to reunite. “I condemn the secession of States,” he said. “I detest it. But the great fact is still before us. Seven states have gone out from among us.” Coercion to bring them back would solve nothing, he warned. “You may spend millions of treasure, you may shed oceans
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