sentiment, to make apparent the absolute resources of the country and the normal character of the people, and thus to vindicate free institutions, than all the partisan dissensions and peaceful speculation since the Declaration of Independence. Moreover, the war has developed original inventive talent in ordnance and camp equipage, afforded precisely the discipline our people so disinclined to subordination” needed, won our self-indulgent young men from luxury to selfdenial, evoked the generous instincts of the mercantile classes, called out the benign efficiency of woman, confirmed the popular faith, fused classes, made heroes, unmasked the selfish and treacherous, purified the social atmosphere, and, through disaster and hope deferred, conducted the nation to the highest and most Christian self-assertion and victory. The history of the Sanitary Commission, the improvements in military science, the letters of the rank and file of the Union army preserved in the local journals, the topographical revelations, personal prowess, vast extent of operations, new means and appliances, and momentous results, will afford the future historian not only unique materials, but fresh and surprising evidence of the elements of American civilization as exhibited through the fiery ordeal of civil war. The Proclamation of the President of the United States at the close • “Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history. "We, of this Congress, will be remembered in spite of ourselves. “No personal significance, or insignificance, can spare one or another of us. “The fiery trial through which we pass, will light us down in honor or dishonor to the latest generation. "We say that we are for the Union. The world will not forget that while we say this, we do know how to save the Union. The world knows we do know how to save it. We, even we here, hold the power and bear the responsibility. "In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free, honorable alike in what we give and what we preserve. "We shall nobly save or meanly lose the last best hope of the earth. "Other means may succeed. This could not fail. "The way is plain-peaceful, generous, just; a way which, if followed, the world will ever applaud, and God must forever bless. “ABRAHAM LINCOLN." of the year 1862, betokens a new and advanced charter of American progress. Look at the "Will anybody deny," asks John Bright, in a recent speech to his constituents, "that the Government at Washington, as regards its own people, is the strongest Government in the world at this hour? And for this simple reason, because it is based on the will of an instructed people. Look at its power. I am not now discussing why it is, or the cause which is developing this power; but power is the thing which men regard in these old countries, and which they ascribe mainly to European institutions. But look at the power which the United States have developed! They have brought more men into the field, they have built more ships for their navy, they have shown greater resources than any other nation in Europe at this moment is capable of. order which has prevailed at their elections, at which, as you see by the papers, 50,000, or 100,000, or 250,000 persons voted in a given State, with less disorder than you have seen lately in three of the smallest boroughs in England-Barnstable, Windsor, and Andover. Look at their industry. Notwithstanding this terrific struggle, their agriculture, their manufactures and commerce proceed with an uninterrupted success. They are ruled by a President chosen, it is true, not from some worn-out royal or noble blood, but from the people, and one whose truthfulness and spotless honor have gained him universal praise. And now the country that has been vilified through half the organs of the press in England during the last three years, and was pointed out, too, as an example to be shunned by many of your statesmen,that country, now in mortal strife, affords a haven and a home for multitudes flying from the burdens and the neglect of the old Governments of Europe. And, when this mortal strife is over, when peace is restored, when slavery is destroyed, when the Union is cemented afresh-for I would say, in the language of one of our poets addressing his country, 'The grave's not dug where traitor hands shall lay, then Europe and England may learn that an instructed democracy is the surest foundation of government, and that education and freedom are the only sources of true greatness and true happiness among any people." When the new scientific methods of historical writing are applied to the annals of our own country, some remarkable coincidences and a dramatic unity in the sequence of memorable events will illustrate the chronicle. To subdue the wilderness; to colonize with various nationalities a vast continent; to vindicate, by the ordeal of battle, the supremacy among them of the Anglo-Saxon element; to raise and purify this into political self-assertion, by establishing free institutions; under their auspicious influence to attain the greatest industrial development and territorial expansion; and, finally, in these latter days, to solve, by the terrible alternative of civil war, the vast and dark problem of slavery-this is the momentous series of circumstances whereby it has pleased God to educate this nation, and induce moral results fraught with the highest duties and hopes of humanity; and, deeply conscious thereof, we cannot but exclaim, with our national poet: "O country, marvel of the earth! O realm to sudden greatness grown! |