she threw off the garment of rags and filth which had hidden her fair
proportions, and donned the imperial toga of humanity, and wrapping the
rich folds of the gorgeous mantle around her, stood out before the world
in all the dignity of freedom and virtue--a form which made the whole
earth glad and the heavens clap their hands in exultation. What giant
leaps the nation made in manhood and heroism, strides following each
other thick and fast, until the most cynical of the doubters of humanity
began to open their eyes, and acknowledge that they would not have
thought her capable of such unexampled deeds. The national heroism which
the Northern people have displayed is indeed unparalleled. They have
risen up as one man to the support of the Government. They have offered
property and life and the most sacred treasures of the heart upon the
shrine of constitutional liberty. At the sound of the drum, they have
left the farm and the barn, the anvil and the mill, the church and the
forum, and formed into the grand army of invincibles which, at the word
of command, have marched forward, conquering and resistless. They have
borne patiently with delay and defeat, with blunders and crimes, with
humiliation and taxation, and have, in short, proved themselves
_Americans_ worthy of the name. Of course, national heroism has inspired
individual heroism, and to-day the country blazes from frontier to
metropolis with gallant records of daring deeds. Their number is
infinite; they can not be individually remembered, but only massed
together, one sublime mosaic by which the gallantry and heroism of the
free, untrammeled North is proved. We doubt not there is a leaf for each
hero in the heroic record of heaven, and the due share of hero-worship
paid to each by those angels who love to pore over the chronicles of
earth. And we mourn less over the coming of this war at the present time
than we should, did we not perceive that sooner or later it was
inevitable. It was written in the fate-book of God. Never before was war
so emphatically a war of principle. It mitigates the suffering much to
know this. It is something to know that all the brave men who have
fallen have fallen for the right; and when we believe so, we do firmly
believe that their death will give liberty and happiness to millions yet
to be. We can not think but that their lives are well spent. There are
some who are written upon God's muster-scroll as martyrs to liberty. Who
would n