ssault, and
to a certain extent deprived of its usual resources, in the very effort
of resistance it will have put forth new connections, which returning
peace will multiply and strengthen. The immense demand on its energy and
enterprise will have aroused all its slumbering capacities and
stimulated them to the highest point of exertion. Under the necessity of
self-preservation, the nation will have been fully awakened to a sense
of its gigantic power, which, when employed in the benign pursuits of
peace, will be sufficient speedily to restore its prosperity to even
more than former splendor. The resources of our broad domain are so
unbounded, and the courage and persistence of our people so indomitable,
that even the sacrifices and losses of so great a war will make no
serious impression on the destined career of this youthful and growing
nation. So long as the vigor and elasticity of the popular force is not
absolutely overpowered and suppressed, the reaction will only be so much
the stronger for all the mighty pressure which has been placed upon it.
Returning strength, so invigorated and redoubled by repose, will enable
the people to bear the burden patiently, and within a comparatively
brief period to throw it off entirely; and then they will bound forward
with renewed energy in that race of unexampled progress which has been
sadly interrupted, but not by any means wholly arrested.

If peace had continued, and especially if no civil war had occurred to
desolate our country, the labors of the population would have been
directed chiefly to the increase of wealth, and to the improvement which
always accompanies material prosperity. It would be a monstrous error to
say that the interruption of these occupations has not been a calamity
of the most serious character. Yet is it not altogether unmixed with
good. Indeed, it is by no means certain that, in the circumstances
which gave rise to the war, there was not an actual necessity, of a
moral nature, which made it on the whole advantageous to arouse the
nation to this gigantic strife, and thus to exchange its ordinary
struggle for wealth into a combat for a momentous principle. Is it
questionable whether, in every case, the establishment of such a
principle is not the most important of all objects, and whether every
other pursuit and occupation ought not to be made secondary to it? In
the sacrifices and sufferings which a nation undergoes for the sake of
asserting an impo