order, moral grandeur, religious
unity, and cooeperative industry of the past epoch will be allied to the
civil liberty, social equality, intellectual culture, and practical
activity of the present. Under these combined influences humanity will
start upon a new career, whose achievements in literature, in science,
in art, in religion, in practical activities, will make even the vast
accumulations of our modern day seem to the future historian
insignificant accomplishments, 'a school-boy's tale, the wonder of an
hour.'

* * * * *

To the American student of history his own country presents, at the
present time, a most mournful and convincing example of the inability of
intellectual agencies to secure national stability or individual
prosperity in the absence of moral strength. Here education has been
general, mental activity great, and literary culture prevalent. Here,
nevertheless, during half a century a giant wrong has held paramount
sway; dominating the sentiment, dictating the policy, controlling the
action of the Government, and, at the same time, bending commercial
interests to its purpose, giving the law to public opinion, and
directing the destiny of the republic. Not to any want of knowledge has
the reign of this tyrant been due. The slaveholding institutions of the
South are mainly sustained by men of high mental development and large
intellectual culture. The statesmen who staked the freedom of a race
against the chance of political honor, were renowned for mental vigor.
The people who turned a deaf ear to the cry of the bondmen, are
celebrated throughout the world for their intelligence.

The weakness of the nation was not intellectual, but moral. The 'selfish
pursuit of material advantages' had conquered, in the slaveowner of the
South, and in the mercantile community of the North, the love of equity
and the desire of right. Political ambition was stronger among the
statesmen of the North, than the instincts of mercy or the sense of
religious responsibility. Love of gain weighed heavier with the people
of the United States than the love of God or of their fellowmen. In vain
the voice of warning has been sounded. In vain has the republic been
urged to love mercy and to do justice. The country lay in a moral
lethargy, from which no gentle means could rouse it, and the dread
thunderbolt of war was launched to smite it into action. Through
humiliation and suffering; amid widows