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he stake was the life not merely of their country, but of a principle whose rescue was to make America in very deed a New World, the cradle of a fairer manhood. Weakness was to be no longer the tyrant's opportunity, but the victim's claim; labor should never henceforth be degraded as a curse, but honored as that salt of the earth which keeps life sweet, and gives its savor to duty. To be of good family should mean being a child of the one Father of us all; and good birth, the being born into God's world, and not into a fool's paradise of man's invention. But even had this moral leaven been wanting, had the popular impulse been merely one of patriotism, we should have been well content to claim as the result of democracy that for the first time in the history of the world it had mustered an army that knew for what it was fighting. Nationality is no dead abstraction, no unreal sentiment, but a living and operative virtue in the heart and moral nature of men. It enlivens the dullest soul with an ideal out of and beyond itself, lifting every faculty to a higher level of vision and action. It enlarges the narrowest intellect with a fealty to something better than self. It emancipates men from petty and personal interests, to make them conscious of sympathies whose society ennobles. Life has a deeper meaning when its throb beats time to a common impulse and catches its motion from the general heart. But while the experience of the last four years has been such, with all its sorrows, as to make us proud of our strength and grateful for the sources of it, we cannot but feel that peace will put to the test those higher qualities which war leaves in reserve. What are we to do with the country our arms have regained? It is by our conduct in this stewardship, and not by our rights under the original compact of the States, that our policy is to be justified. The glory of conquest is trifling and barren, unless victory clear the way to a higher civilization, a more solid prosperity, and a Union based upon reciprocal benefits. In what precise manner the seceding States shall return, whether by inherent right, or with some preliminary penance and ceremony of readoption, is of less consequence than what they shall be after their return. Dependent provinces, sullenly submitting to a destiny which they loathe, would be a burden to us, rather than an increase of strength or an element of prosperity. War would have won us a peace stripped
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