is essentially a people's contest. On the side of the Union it is
a struggle for maintaining in the world that form and substance of
government whose leading object is to elevate the condition of men to
lift artificial weights from all shoulders; to clear the paths of laudable
pursuit for all; to afford all an unfettered start, and a fair chance
in the race of life. Yielding to partial and temporary departures,
from necessity; this is the leading object of the government for whose
existence we contend.

I am most happy to believe that the plain people understand and appreciate
this. It is worthy of note that, while in this the government's hour of
trial large numbers of those in the army and navy who have been favored
with the offices have resigned and proved false to the hand which had
pampered them, not one common soldier or common sailor is known to have
deserted his flag.

Great honor is due to those officers who remained true, despite the
example of their treacherous associates; but the greatest honor, and most
important fact of all, is the unanimous firmness of the common soldiers
and common sailors. To the last man, so far as known, they have
successfully resisted the traitorous efforts of those whose commands,
but an hour before, they obeyed as absolute law. This is the patriotic
instinct of the plain people. They understand, without an argument, that
the destroying of the government which was made by Washington means no
good to them.

Our popular government has often been called an experiment. Two points in
it our people have already settled--the successful establishing and
the successful administering of it. One still remains--its successful
maintenance against a formidable internal attempt to overthrow it. It is
now for them to demonstrate to the world that those who can fairly carry
an election can also suppress a rebellion; that ballots are the rightful
and peaceful successors of bullets; and that when ballots have fairly
and constitutionally decided, there can be no successful appeal back
to bullets; that there can be no successful appeal, except to ballots
themselves, at succeeding elections. Such will be a great lesson of peace:
teaching men that what they cannot take by an election, neither can they
take it by a war; teaching all the folly of being the beginners of a war.

Lest there be some uneasiness in the minds of candid men as to what is
to be the course of the government toward the Southern St