ual in the South, as in the North, shall
control his own vote, and when that is done the result, whatever it may
be, will always be cheerfully accepted. Contention between sections,
divided by a fixed line, is the most undesirable form of political
controversy. It is also the most illogical. But consolidation on one
side leads naturally and always to consolidation on the other side.
The growth of the country will ultimately effect an adjustment, but
the reason of men should not wait for the mere power of numbers to
settle questions which properly belong in the domain of reason alone.

Nor do the Southern leaders seem ever to have correctly estimated the
political force that is to come from the predestined increase of
numbers. Aside from the vast growth of population in the new States
and Territories of the North-West, the increase of the colored race in
the South must arrest attention. In the lifetime of those now living,
that class of the population will reach the enormous aggregate of five
and twenty millions. As this increase continues, no policy could
possibly be devised so fatal to Southern prosperity as that which
Southern leaders have pursued since the close of the war. Ceasing to
be a slave the colored man must be a citizen. He cannot be permanently
held in a condition between the two. He cannot be remanded to slavery.
His numbers will ultimately command what should now be yielded on the
ground of simple justice and wise policy.

The twenty years between 1861 and 1881 are memorable in the history of
the Congress of the United States. Senators and Representatives were
called upon to deal with new problems from the hour in which they were
summoned by President Lincoln to provide for the exigencies of a great
war. They confronted enormous difficulties at every step; and if they
had failed in their duty, if they had not comprehended the gravity and
peril of the situation, if they had faltered in courage, or had been
obscured in vision, the Union of the States might have been lost, the
progress of civilization on the American Continent checked for
generations. With the National arms triumphant, with the Union of the
States made strong, the American people, in the quiet of domestic
peace, in the enjoyment of wide-spread prosperity, should not forget
the dangers and sacrifices which secured to them their great blessings.

--The first demand of war is money. So great was the amount required
that Congress