nt. Blood shall call out for vengeance, and
tears shall plead for justice, and grief shall silently beckon, and
love, heart-smitten, shall wail for justice. Good men and angels
will cry out: "How long, O Lord, how long, wilt thou not avenge?"
And, then, these guiltiest and most remorseless traitors, these high
and cultured men,--with might and wisdom, used for the destruction
of their country,--the most accursed and detested of all criminals,
that have drenched a continent in needless blood, and moved the
foundations of their times with hideous crimes and cruelty, caught
up in black clouds, full of voices of vengeance and lurid with
punishment, shall be whirled aloft and plunged downwards forever and
forever in an endless retribution; while God shall say, "Thus shall
it be to all who betray their country"; and all in heaven and upon
the earth will say "Amen!"

But for the people misled, for the multitudes drafted and driven
into this civil war, let not a trace of animosity remain. The
moment their willing hand drops the musket, and they return to their
allegiance, then stretch out your own honest right hand to greet
them. Recall to them the old days of kindness. Our hearts wait for
their redemption. All the resources of a renovated nation shall be
applied to rebuild their prosperity, and smooth down the furrows of
war. Has this long and weary period of strife been an unmingled
evil? Has nothing been gained? Yes, much. This nation has
attained to its manhood. Among Indian customs is one which admits
young men to the rank of warriors only after severe trials of
hunger, fatigue, pain, endurance. They reach their station, not
through years, but ordeals. Our nation has suffered, but now is
strong. The sentiment of loyalty and patriotism, next in importance
to religion, has been rooted and grounded. We have something to be
proud of, and pride helps love. Never so much as now did we love
our country. But four such years of education in ideas, in the
knowledge of political truth, in the love of history, in the
geography of our own country, almost every inch of which we have
probed with the bayonet, have never passed before. There is half a
hundred years' advance in four. We believed in our institutions and
principles before; but now we know their power. It is one thing to
look upon artillery, and be sure that it is loaded; it is another
thing to prove its power in battle! We believe in the hidden power
st