We are a commercial people. We are devoted to making money... And yet we shall proclaim as our policy: the Union first, submission to traitors NEVER.
Original passage & context
"We are a commercial people. We are devoted to making money. [...] we shall proclaim as our policy, the Union first, submission to traitors NEVER."
The Republican answer to the Democratic charge that Northern rigidity forced the crisis (se-022): a merchant city that lives to make money still will not buy the Union back with concessions to secession. The phrase became a Northern watchword — 'the Union first, submission to traitors NEVER.' Opening and closing lines of the one editorial joined with [...]; verified against the AHA "Sixteen Months."
Read it in the original — Boston Atlas and Daily Bee, Feb 1, 1861 ↗