<​July 31​> opinion of the people at large in the , and all over the country. From being right in the first instance, you have put yourselves in the wrong, and there are none who sustain you. As men of sense you are bound to see, if you will open your eyes, that you cannot effect your purposes. Nevertheless you are still training and drilling, and keeping together, and threatening a renewal of the war. I have said to you often that you cannot succeed; by this time you ought to see it yourselves. What can your small force do against two thousand armed men, entrenched in a city, and defending themselves, their wives and their children?— Besides if you are the aggressors, I am determined that all the power of the shall be used to prevent your success. I can never agree that a set of infatuated and infuriated men shall barbarously attack a peaceful people who have submitted to all the demands of the law; and when they had full power to do so, refrained from inflicting vengeance upon their enemies. You may count on my most determined opposition— upon the opposition of the law, and upon that of every peaceful law abiding citizen of the country. This is not spoken in anger.— God knows I would do you no injury unless compelled to do so to sustain the laws. But mob violence must be put down. It is threatening the whole country with anarchy and ruin. It is menacing our fair form of Government, and destroying the confidence of the patriot in the institutions of his country.