y and deserved
contempt. A nation to be wholly slave was alone acceptable to the
disunionists; and to establish such a nation the hosts were arrayed
on the one side; to preserve and perpetuate the Union and to
overthrow the would-be slave nation, they were also, thank God,
arrayed on the other.

This was the portentous issue made up--triable by the tribunal of
last resort from which there is no earthly appeal.

Promptly, even enthusiastically, did the South respond to the
summons to battle, and with a heroism worthy of a better cause did
it devote life and property to the maintenance of the Confederacy.
But from mountain, hillside, vale, plain, and prairie, from field,
factory, counting-house, city, village, and hamlet, from all
professions and occupation alike came the sons of freedom, with
the cry of "Union and Liberty," under one flag, to meet the opposing
hosts, heroically ready to make the necessary sacrifice that the
unity of the American Republic should be preserved.

The effort to establish a slave nation in the afternoon of the
nineteenth century resulted in a civil war unparalleled in magnitude,
and the bloodiest in the history of the human race. In the eleven
seceding States the authority of the Constitution was thrown off;
the National Government was defied; former official oaths of army,
navy, and civil officers were disregarded, and other oaths were
taken to support another government; the public property of the
United States was seized in the seceding States as of right, Cabinet
officers of the President assisting in the plunder; Senators and
Representatives in Congress, while yet holding seats, making laws,
and drawing pay, plotted treason, and, later, defiantly joined the
Confederacy; sequestration acts were passed by the Confederate
Congress, and citizens of the United States were made aliens in
the Confederacy, and their property there was confiscated, and
debts due loyal men North were collected for the benefit of the
Confederate Treasury; piratical vessels, with the aid and connivance
of boastful _civilized_ monarchies of Europe, destroyed our commerce
and drove our flag from the high seas; above a half million of men
fell in battle, and another half million died of wounds and disease
incident to war; above sixty thousand Union soldiers died in Southern
prisons; the direct cost of the Rebellion, paid from the United
States Treasury, approximated seven billions of dollars, and the
indirect cos