sts on manna from the Divine Hand. This, then, is the
fourth step in the attainment of the true ideal of character for
American women--_the effort to renew society in the actual simplicity of
our republican institutions_. Women, American women, should hold dear as
anything in life the preservation and purity of those blessed
institutions, guaranteeing to them as they do all their eminent
privileges, and founded as they are on that emancipating genius of
Christianity, which, through every age, has pointed a finger of hope,
love, encouragement to woman as a chief instrument in the world's
promised elevation and enfranchisement.

While dwelling upon the faults of American women, I would at the same
time do full credit to their virtues. I believe that they occupy as high
a place as any women in the world, even a higher. But I trust that they
will rise to the height of the demands which the changed times and the
exigencies of the situation are pressing upon them, and will continue to
press. This war has clearly and forcibly eliminated truths and
principles which the long rule of the slave power had wellnigh eclipsed;
it has been a very spear of Ithuriel, at whose keen touch men and
principles start up in their real, not their simulated character. During
its three years of progress, the national education has been advanced
beyond computation. When it is over, things, ideas, will not go back to
the old standpoint. Then will arise the new conditions, demands,
possibilities. If there is one truth that has been unmistakably
developed by the war, it is the controlling moral power and sanction
which a free government derives from woman. And this has been shown not
only in the influence for good which the loyal women of the North have
contributed for the aid of the Government, but with equal power in the
influence for evil which the Southern women have exerted for its
destruction. I suppose it is true that this war for slavery has received
its strongest, fiercest continuing impulses from the women of the South.
Nothing could exceed the enthusiasm, the persistency, the heroic
endurance, the self-sacrifice they have manifested. Only had it been in
a good cause!

Just here let me say a word in behalf of these Southern women. There is
a disposition on the part of the Northern public, forming their opinion
from the instances of fierce spite and vindictiveness, of furious scorn
and hatred, which have been chronicled in the reports of arm