overtops all others, and causes the American people, who are the most conflicting of any in their local views, and the most pertinacious of any in their private opinions, to present an undivided front and a solid column against treason and rebellion. Men of the most diverse social, political, and religious sentiments; men who differ greatly from one another respecting the causes of the rebellion; men who will be found to differ greatly from one another upon the grave and difficult questions that will arise when the rebellion is quelled, and the whole American people are once more assembled, by their representatives, in the national Congress; men of all classes, conditions, and opinions have rallied with the unanimity of a single mind, and the determination of a single will, under that same flag that flung its rippling lines over the armies of Washington. They are fighting for the very same Constitution (not altered in a single syllable, and never to be altered hereafter, except by constitutional modes. and methods) by which the original thirteen States became an organized nation, and into which all the rest have been grafted as living branches of the living vine. It is a This is something to be thankful for. token of good from God, of favorable designs of the Supreme Arbiter, in relation to the country. For, had he decreed to break it in pieces, he would not have wakened it to such a consciousness. He would have permitted the existing differences and dissensions, already many and great, to become distracting and dividing, and, as in the instance of the builders of Babel, would have prevented all unity and concert of action. But under his favoring providence, everything from the very opening of the war has conspired to widen, deepen, and strengthen the national sentiment and the national enthusiasm. It is stronger to-day than ever. The determination of the people at home, and the people in the camp, that "the Union must and shall be preserved,” is now as firm and positive as it was in the will of that iron President who gave this motto to his countrymen. The maritime and manufacturing population of New England, the calm, central masses of the Middle States, the prodigious energies of the West and Northwest, the gallantry and great self-sacrifice of the Border sovereignties, are all now massed and combined together as they never have been before. Could those two great statesmen, who understood the genius of the American Constitution better than any except its founders and framers, and whose eloquence, from youth to old age, was inspired by the idea of an American nationality, more than by any other idea-could Webster and Clay revisit the earthly arena upon which they toiled and struggled, they would find that the master truth of their statesmanship and their oratory, is now, at length, the dominant and living thought of the people. The masses have at last reached the height of their great argument; and that sentiment of Union, for which they plead, and for which one of them lost his almost omnipotent local influence, while his name and his fame became all the more historic and universal, is now the sober and undying conviction of the day and the era. 2. In the second place, we should render profound and hearty thanks to Almighty God, on this day, because the American Government is not waging an unjust war for foreign conquest, but a righteous war against domestic treason and rebellion. The demoralizing influence of national ambition, and of the wars that spring out of it, is universally conceded. When a nation is seized with the lust of conquest, and begins a military career for purposes of self-aggrandizement, the real patriot will weep bitterer tears over the fictitious and accursed glory that results, than over famine and pestilence. The American people, within the past twenty years, have shown some indications of such a temper, and had their career of prosperity been uninterrupted, it may have been that they would have formed no exception to the general rule, that increase of power renders a nation arrogant, and would have fallen into the same class of examples with ancient Macedon and Rome, and modern France and England. But as yet we have entered upon no such career of injustice and blood. On the contrary, we may hope that the present severe experience of the nation will exterminate all unlawful aspirations, and leave it sober, circumspect, and humble under the chastising hand of God. This certainly is the tendency of the lesson of the hour; and if the people shall not thoroughly learn it; if, after they shall have emerged successfully from this intestine struggle, they shall seek collision with foreign nations, and aim at an empire to extend from the Great Bear to the Southern Cross, the vials of wrath will be poured out to their destruction and annihilation. This is not a war for foreign conquest. It is a war against treason within the realm; as clearly so as those wars by which Great Britain has pre vented Scotland and Ireland from becoming independent sovereignties, whenever factions and rebellions have been organized to accomplish this end. For the plea of the leaders of that alien government which has been constructed upon our southern borders, that they have the same right to demand and establish an independent existence, separate from the United States, that our common forefathers had when they achieved their independence, will not bear a moment's inspection. In the first place, the thirteen States which revolted against the government of Great Britain were distant colonies, separated from the mother country by three thousand miles of water; but the nine or ten States that have seceded from the American Union, without consulting the remaining partners in the compact, are tied to the Union by geo * Upon the theory that the Constitution is simply a compact between the States, the doctrine of the right of each State to be the sole judge of its grievances, and to secede from the Union at will, and by its own isolated action, is untenable. For a compact, when entered into, immediately changes the status and relations of the parties. It is a cession of a certain amount of personal sovereignty for value received, which amount of sovereignty cannot be resumed without consent of parties. A capitalist is not obliged to enter into partnership, but having voluntarily done so, he is no longer the entirely sovereign and independent person, in respect to his capital, that he was before. He |