"Many refuse to bear the common burden;
But thy solicitous people answereth
Unasked, and cries, 'I bend my back to it.'"

And that the contrast may be felt in its fullest completeness, we must
consider that no private soldier is tempted into the ranks by hopes of
plunder, or driven into them by want of fair wages for fair work,--that
no officer can look forward to the splendid prizes of hereditary wealth
and title. Love of their country was the only incentive, its gratitude
their only reward. And in the matter of taxation also, a willingness to
help bear the common burden has more of generosity in it where the
wealth of the people is in great part the daily result of their daily
toil, and not a hoard inherited without merit, as without industry.

Nor have the qualities which lead to such striking results been
exhibited only by the North. The same public spirit, though misled by
wicked men for selfish ends, has shown itself in almost equal strength
at the South. And in both cases it has been unmistakably owing to that
living and active devotion of the people to institutions in whose
excellence they share, and their habit of obedience to laws of their
own making. If we have not hitherto had that conscious feeling of
nationality, the ideal abstract of history and tradition, which belongs
to older countries, compacted, by frequent war and united by memories
of common danger and common triumph, it has been simply because our
national existence has never been in such peril as to force upon us the
conviction that it was both the title-deed of our greatness and its
only safeguard. But what splendid possibilities has not our trial
revealed even to ourselves! What costly stuff whereof to make a nation!
Here at last is a state whose life is not narrowly concentred in a
despot or a class, but feels itself in every limb; a government which
is not a mere application of force from without, but dwells as a vital
principle in the will of every citizen. Our enemies--and wherever a man
is to be found bribed by an abuse, or who profits by a political
superstition, we have a natural enemy--have striven to laugh and sneer
and lie this apparition of royal manhood out of existence. They
conspired our murder; but in this vision is the prophecy of a dominion
which is to push them from their stools, and whose crown doth sear
their eyeballs. America lay asleep, like the princess of the fairy
tale, enchanted by prosperity; but at the firs