us applause of the whole body, awakened by heartfelt
gratification at the event, filling the eyes of thousands with tears of
joy, which they neither could nor desired to repress, you would have
felt, as every person present felt, that the time had arrived when all
sectional or other perilous dissensions had ceased, and that nothing
should be heard in the future but the voice of harmony proclaiming
devotion to a common country, of pride in being bound together by a
common Union, existing and protected by forms of government proved by
experience to be eminently fitted for the exigencies of either war or
peace.

In the principles announced by the convention and in the feeling there
manifested we have every assurance that harmony throughout our entire
land will soon prevail. We know that as in former days, as was
eloquently declared by Webster, the nation's most gifted statesman,
Massachusetts and South Carolina went "shoulder to shoulder through the
Revolution" and stood hand in hand "around the Administration of
Washington and felt his own great arm lean on them for support," so will
they again, with like magnanimity, devotion, and power, stand round your
Administration and cause you to feel that you may also lean on them for
support.

In the proceedings, Mr. President, which we are to place in your hands
you will find that the convention performed the grateful duty imposed
upon them by their knowledge of your "devotion to the Constitution and
laws and interests of your country," as illustrated by your entire
Presidential career, of declaring that in you they "recognize a Chief
Magistrate worthy of the nation and equal to the great crisis upon
which your lot is cast;" and in this declaration it gives us marked
pleasure to add we are confident that the convention has but spoken the
intelligent and patriotic sentiment of the country. Ever inaccessible to
the low influences which often control the mere partisan, governed alone
by an honest opinion of constitutional obligations and rights and of the
duty of looking solely to the true interests, safety, and honor of the
nation, such a class is incapable of resorting to any bait for
popularity at the expense of the public good.

In the measures which you have adopted for the restoration of the Union
the convention saw only a continuance of the policy which for the same
purpose was inaugurated by your immediate predecessor. In his reelection
by the people, after that policy h