established and permanent
authority. It is the instinct of the national destiny working out its
ends in spite of the difficulties and dangers of the hour. It is the
prophetic vision of the popular mind, unconsciously preparing for a
great future not yet visible to the natural eye, but which the
providence of God, in its own good time, will verify to the firm and
courageous hearts of our people.

The loyal people of our country, those who are determined to restore the
Union, are well aware that it cannot be maintained by force. That great
political organization was voluntary in its origin, based on the consent
of the governed; and it has been upheld through all its marvellous
career of prosperity by the free and unconstrained will of the people,
who rejoiced in its common benefits and blessings. The novel system on
which it was built, not only required the largest liberty for its very
conception and for its practical embodiment, but was also admirably
devised to secure the complete and permanent enjoyment of that
individual independence in thought and action, which is the first of
human privileges. Those States of the Union which are preeminently loyal
to it, have ever cherished the most liberal principles of civil polity,
and have framed their constitutions in accordance with the most modern
and advanced maxims of popular rights. So far are they from any
disposition to usurp authority or to impose unjust or unnecessary
restraints upon the political action of the people, that they are
charged with the opposite fault of carrying liberty to the extreme of
ungoverned license. Of all the American States, these are the least
likely to interfere with the great principles of civil liberty, or to
impose an unacceptable government on the people by force. All the
violence, so far as any has been shown, is wholly on the other side.
Leaving entirely out of view the exceptional irregularities arising from
a state of civil war, and it must be acknowledged that the social and
political system of the Southern States is one which rests on arbitrary
force as its corner stone. It is this arbitrary and tyrannical spirit
embodied in Southern institutions which has seized on the pretext of
secession in order to destroy the Government of the Union. The efforts
of the loyal States and of the Federal authority in the present war are
antagonistic to this spirit. Their purpose is to break down and destroy
this system of arbitrary power, which has