the truth. But we
all took the insults that were offered to the flag in President
Buchanan's time as coolly as if that were the proper course of things,
while the attack on Sumter had the same effect on us that the
acknowledgment of the Pretender as King of Great Britain and Ireland by
Louis XIV. had on the English. War was then promptly accepted, and has
ever since been waged, with that various fortune which is known to all
contests, and which will be so known while wars shall be known on
earth,--in other words, while our planet shall be the abiding-place of
men. We have had victories, and we have had defeats, which is the
common lot; but, taken as a whole, we have but little reason to complain
of results, if we compare our situation now with what it was at the
close of 1862. Great things have been done in 1863, such as place the
military result of the war beyond all doubt, and permitting us to hope
for the early restoration of peace, provided the people shall furnish
their Government with the human material necessary to inflict upon the
enemy that grace stroke which shall put them out of their pain by
putting an end to their existence; and that Government itself shall not
be wanting in that energy, without which men and money are worse than
useless in war,--for then they would be but wasted.

The year opened darkly for us; for not even the success of General
Rosecrans on the well-contested field of Murfreesboro'--a success
literally extorted from a brave and stubborn and skilful foe--could
altogether compensate for the Union defeat at Fredericksburg, a defeat
that gave additional force to the gloomy words of those _grognards_ who
had adopted the doctrine that it was impossible for the Army of the
Potomac to accomplish anything worthy of its numbers, and of the
position and purpose assigned to it in the war. Months rolled on, and
little was done, the mere military losses and gains being not far from
equally shared by the two parties; but that was positively a loss to the
enemy, whose position it has been from the first, that they must have so
large a proportion of the successes as should tend to encourage their
people at home and their advocates abroad, and so compensate for their
inferiority in numbers and in property. Nothing has tended more, all
through the war, to show the vast difference in the parties to it, than
the little effect which serious reverses have had on the Unionists in
comparison with the effect of s