d a faint music of the dawning caught,
All through the sounds of War.

Our souls are still with praise!
It is the dawning; there is work to do:
When we have borne the long hours' burden through,
Then we will paeans raise.

God give us, with the time,
His strength for His large purpose to the world!
To bear before Him, in its face unfurled,
His gonfalon sublime!

Ay, we _are_ strong! Both sides
The misty river stretch His army's wings:
Heavenward, with glorious wheel, one flank He flings;
And one front still abides!

Strongest where most bereft!
His great ones He doth call to more command.
For whom He hath prepared it, they shall stand
On the Right Hand and Left!

RECONSTRUCTION AND NEGRO SUFFRAGE.

The submission of the Rebel armies and the occupation of the Rebel
territory by the forces of the United States are successes which have
been purchased at the cost of the lives of half a million of loyal men
and a debt of nearly three thousand millions of dollars; but, according
to theories of State Rights now springing anew to life, victory has
smitten us with impotence. The war, it seems, was waged for the purpose
of forcing the sword out of the Rebel's hands, and forcing into them the
ballot. At an enormous waste of treasure and blood, we have acquired the
territory for which we fought; and lo! it is not ours, but belongs to
the people we have been engaged in fighting, in virtue of the
constitution we have been fighting for. The Federal government is now,
it appears, what Wigfall elegantly styled it four years ago,--nothing
but "the one-horse concern at Washington": the real power is in the
States it has subdued. We are therefore expected to act like the savage,
who, after thrashing his Fetich for disappointing his prayers, falls
down again and worships it. Our Fetich is State Rights, as perversely
misunderstood. The Rebellion would have been soon put down, had it been
merely an insurrectionary outbreak of masses of people without any
political organization. Its tremendous force came from its being a
revolt of States, with the capacity to employ those powers of taxation
and conscription which place the persons and property of all residing in
political communities at the service of their governments. And now that
characteristic which gave strength to the Rebel communities in war is
invoked to s