h for many years barbarism
has been gaining power. It is for the establishment of liberty and
justice, of freedom of conscience and liberty of thought, of equal law
and of personal rights, throughout the South. If these are not to be
secured without the abolition of slavery, it is a war for the abolition
of slavery. We are not making war to reestablish an old order of things,
but to set up a new one. We are not giving ourselves and our fortunes
for the purpose of fighting a few battles, and then making peace,
restoring the Southern States to their old place in the Union,--but for
the sake of destroying the root from which this war has sprung, and of
making another such war impossible. It is not worth while to do only
half or a quarter of our work. But if we do it thoroughly, as we ought,
the war must be a long one, and will require from us long sacrifices. It
is well to face up to the fact at once, that this generation is to be
compelled to frugality, and that luxurious expenses upon trifles and
superfluities must be changed for the large and liberal costliness of a
noble cause. We are not to expect or hope for a speedy return of what is
called prosperity; but we are greatly and abundantly prosperous, if we
succeed in extending and establishing the principles which alone can
give dignity and value to national or individual life, and without
which, material abundance, success in trade, and increase of wealth are
evidences rather of the decline than of the progress of a state. We, who
have so long been eager in the pursuit and accumulation of riches, are
now to show more generous energies in the free spending of our means
to gain the invaluable objects for which we have gone to war. There is
nothing disheartening in this prospect. Our people, accustomed as they
have been during late years to the most lavish use of money, and to
general extravagance in expense, have not yet lost the tradition of the
economies and thrift of earlier times, and will not find it difficult
to put them once more into practice. The burden will not fall upon any
class; and when each man, whatever be his station in life, is called
upon to lower his scale of living, no one person will find it too hard
to do what all others are doing.

But if such be the objects and the prospects of the war, it is plain
that they require more sober thought and more careful forecasting and
more thorough preparation than have thus far been given to them. If we
be the g