War & Peace Quote by George B. McClellan

A general’s vow dressed up as a moral absolute, McClellan’s line turns the Union into both shield and ultimatum: the only guarantor of “internal peace” and “external security,” and therefore something that “Must and Shall” survive any price tag. The phrasing matters. “Can alone” slams the door on compromise, casting secession not as a political disagreement but as a direct threat to safety itself. “Each State” is a strategic reach across regional loyalties; he’s selling the Union as a practical insurance policy, not a sentimental abstraction.

The real tension lives in the closing clause: “cost what it may in time, treasure, and blood.” That triad is blunt, almost bureaucratic in its accounting, yet it’s also a pre-emptive rebuttal to war-weariness. McClellan isn’t promising victory; he’s normalizing sacrifice. The subtext is command-and-control: citizens and politicians alike are being told to accept the logic of military necessity, even if they hate the consequences.

Context sharpens the edge. As a Union general in the Civil War era and a figure often associated with caution and political sensitivity, McClellan’s rhetoric overcompensates for doubts about resolve. He frames preservation as inevitability rather than preference, trying to fuse legitimacy and force into one sentence. The genius - and the warning - is how easily “peace” becomes the justification for war, and how “security” becomes the argument for central authority expanding under emergency.