its Constitution, without the
hearty belief that this Union is a gift of God, to be ours only while we
continue fit to hold it, and to be fought for as for life itself (for a
large, free individual life for each one of us is involved in the great
life of the Union), without this deep, rock-rooted conviction in the
heart of the nation, we shall tend to lukewarmness--to an awful
indifference as to how this contest shall end; and begin to seek for
present peace at any price. We say _present_ peace, for a permanent
peace, short of a thorough crushing of the rebellion, is simply a sheer
impossibility--a wild hallucination. Nor is it a less mad fantasy to
suppose that the rebellion can be effectually crushed without
annihilating slavery, the sole and supreme cause of the rebellion. Such
lukewarmness and untimely peace sentiments, widely diffused through the
loyal States, would be truly alarming. Those who feel and talk thus, are
like blind men on the verge of a fathomless abyss; and should a majority
ever be animated by such ideas, we are gone--hopelessly fallen under the
dark power, never perhaps to rise again in our day or generation. But we
have no fears of such a dismal result; the nation is in the divine
hands, and we feel confident that all will be right in the end.

* * * * *

We have presented two reasons why the Union is priceless. Still further
may this be seen by a glance at the opposite features and tendencies of
the rebellion; and by the consideration of three or four points of
radical divergence and antagonism between slavery and republicanism.

We set out with the following general statements:

The less selfish a man becomes--the more that he rises out of
himself--in that degree (other conditions being equal) does he seek the
society of others from disinterested motives, and the wider becomes the
circle of his sympathies.

On the other hand, the more selfish he is--the lower the range of
faculties which motive him--in that degree, the more exclusive is
he--the more does he tend to isolate himself from others, or to
associate only with those whose character or pursuits minister to his
own gratification. Beasts of prey are solitary in their habits--the
gentle and useful domestic animals are gregarious and social.

Now the same is true of communities. The more elevated their
character--the more that the moral and intellectual faculties
predominate in a community; or the more vi