r the quick
coming of reconciliation and happiness under this common flag. But
we must build again, from the foundations, in all these now free
Southern States. No cheap exhortations "to forgetfulness of the
past, to restore all things as they were," will do. God does not
stretch out his hand, as he has for four dreadful years, that men
may easily forget the might of his terrible acts. Restore things as
they were! What, the alienations and jealousies, the discords and
contentions, and the causes of them? No. In that solemn sacrifice
on which a nation has offered for its sins so many precious victims,
loved and lamented, let our sins and mistakes be consumed utterly
and forever. No, never again shall things be restored as before the
war. It is written in God's decree of events fulfilled, "Old things
are passed away." That new earth, in which dwelleth righteousness,
draws near. Things as they were! Who has an omnipotent hand to
restore a million dead, slain in battle or wasted by sickness, or
dying of grief, broken-hearted? Who has omniscience to search for
the scattered ones? Who shall restore the lost to broken families?
Who shall bring back the squandered treasure, the years of industry
wasted, and convince you that four years of guilty rebellion and
cruel war are no more than dirt upon the hand, which a moment's
washing removes and leaves the hand clean as before? Such a war
reaches down to the very vitals of society. Emerging from such a
prolonged rebellion, he is blind who tells you that the State, by a
mere amnesty and benevolence of government, can be put again, by a
mere decree, in its old place. It would not be honest, it would not
be kind or fraternal, for me to pretend that Southern revolution
against the Union has not reacted, and wrought revolution in the
Southern States themselves, and inaugurated a new dispensation.
Society here is like a broken loom, and the piece which Rebellion
put in, and was weaving, has been cut, and every thread broken. You
must put in new warp and new woof, and weaving anew, as the fabric
slowly unwinds we shall see in it no Gorgon figures, no hideous
grotesques of the old barbarism, but the figures of liberty, vines,
and golden grains, framing in the heads of justice, love, and
liberty. The august convention of 1787 formed the Constitution with
this memorable preamble: "We, the people of the United States, in
order to form a more perfect union, establish justice