t hate lighting the fires of either camp,
and with hands reeking in fraternal blood--with both sections of our
land more or less afflicted--with credit impaired, with the scoff and
jeers of nations ringing in our ears--we stand losers of almost every
thing but our individual self-respect, which has inspired both foes with
the ardor and courage born within us as Americans. This it is that
leaves us unshorn of our strength; this it is that enables us in this
very day of trial and adversity to present to the world the undeniable
fact that we have within us--not as Northerners, not as Southerners,
_but as Americans_--the elements of innate will and physical power,
which makes the scale of valor hang almost with an even beam, and
foretells us, with words which we cannot but hear--and which would to
God we might heed!--that, united, we can rear up on this beautiful and
bountiful land a temple of political, social, and commercial prosperity,
more glorious than that which entered into the dreams and aspirations of
the fathers who founded it.

Alas! that the contemplation of so worthy a theme is marred by the 'ifs'
and 'buts' of controversial strife. Alas! that we cannot depress the
sectional opposing interests which are but secondary to a condition of
political consolidation, and elevate above these distracting and
isolated evils, the great and eternal principle, Strength as it alone
exists in Unity. Alas! that with the beam of suicidal measures we blind
the eye political, because, forsooth, the motes of individual or local
injuries afflict, as they afflict _all_ human forms of government.

The great evil, North and South, before the war, during the war, and
now, is the want of political charity--that charity which, like its
moral prototype, 'suffereth long and is kind.' We the people, North and
South, have been and are unwilling to grant to the other people and
States the right to think, speak, and urge their own opinions--the very
right which each insists upon claiming for itself. It has been held
'dangerous' to discuss questions which, though in one sense pertaining
only to particular States, nevertheless bear upon the whole country. It
has been considered 'heresy' to urge with rhetoric and declamation, even
in our halls of Congress, certain principles for and against Slavery,
for example, lest mischief result from the agitation of those topics.
But in such remonstrance we have forgotten that the very principle of
democrati