ciations would be reaped no longer; that fine virtue which sent up
messages of courage and security from every sod of it would have
evaporated beyond recall. We should be irrevocably cut off from our
past, and be forced to splice the ragged ends of our lives upon
whatever new conditions chance might leave dangling for us.

We confess that we had our doubts at first whether the patriotism of
our people were not too narrowly provincial to embrace the proportions
of national peril. We felt an only too natural distrust of immense
public meetings and enthusiastic cheers.

That a reaction should follow the holiday enthusiasm with which the war
was entered on, that it should follow soon, and that the slackening of
public spirit should be proportionate to the previous over-tension,
might well be foreseen by all who had studied human nature or history.
Men acting gregariously are always in extremes. As they are one moment
capable of higher courage, so they are liable, the next, to baser
depression, and it is often a matter of chance whether numbers shall
multiply confidence or discouragement. Nor does deception lead more
surely to distrust of men than self-deception to suspicion of
principles. The only faith that wears well and holds its color in all
weathers is that which is woven of conviction and set with the sharp
mordant of experience. Enthusiasm is good material for the orator, but
the statesman needs something more durable to work in,--must be able to
rely on the deliberate reason and consequent firmness of the people,
without which that presence of mind, no less essential in times of
moral than of material peril, will be wanting at the critical moment.
Would this fervor of the Free States hold out? Was it kindled by a
just feeling of the value of constitutional liberty? Had it body
enough to withstand the inevitable dampening of checks, reverses,
delays? Had our population intelligence enough to comprehend that the
choice was between order and anarchy, between the equilibrium of a
government by law and the tussle of misrule by _pronunciamiento_?
Could a war be maintained without the ordinary stimulus of hatred and
plunder, and with the impersonal loyalty of principle? These were
serious questions, and with no precedent to aid in answering them.

At the beginning of the war there was, indeed, occasion for the most
anxious apprehension. A President known to be infected with the
political heresies, and suspecte