7 the same time against the State by a renewal of the conspiracy which is known to have existed in the spring of 1861. Confederate troops might be called in on one side, those of New England on the other, and the whole result in a contest fought out with the characteristic obstinacy of the Anglo-Saxon, of which no man now living would see the end. The thirty-years’ war afford a memorable instance, among many others, of how long civil strife may endure when the contest is not confined to individuals, and lies between organized and warring States. Now, as then, the South is arrayed against the North ; and if the fires of religious bigotry are wanting, their place is supplied by ideas equally potent for good and ill——the hatred of race, the sense of the violated rights of man, the attachment for prescriptive right, and the belief that the country cannot be preserved unless prescription is broken down, each appealing to, and finding a response in, the strongest instincts of human nature. Our only escape from these and the other dangers by which we are menaced, consists in refusing to listen to the counsels of those who would persuade us that secession and disorganization are remedies for the evils which Secession has caused, in remembering that the Union which we have is as priceless as the Union which we have lost, and more necessary to our safety, because the surrounding perils are greater, and in feeling sure that no section can be false to the common cause without ruin to itself, and perhaps to all the others. Jefferson Davis has received the plaudits of Mr. Gladstone for making the scattered States of the South into a great nation. Let us not suffer the nation which was confided to our care by our fathers, and which it is our duty to hand down to our children, to be broken up at the bidding of local jealousy and selfish ambition. Here, at the North, among those who have been true to their country and its flag, can the American people alone be found. The Confederates have forfeited their claim to the name of Americans by taking up arms, not as rebels merely, for rebellion may mean reform and amelioration, but for the dismemberment and destruction of the land that gave them birth. The soil on which they stand is ours—the heritage of the nation—but they themselves have become, as far as in them lies, a foreign people. Our destiny is in our own hands, in the use which we make of the opportunities within our grasp—not with Georgia, South Carolina, or Alabama. We have not yet sunk so low that we must necessarily perish, unless we can force or persuade the South to retrace their steps and live with us as part of the same nation. That twenty millions of people, inhabiting a territory five times as large as that of France, should depend for prosperity and greatness on the course pursued by an extraneous and hostile population, would, if it were true, be an instance unparalleled in history, of imbecility and weakness. The real injury inflicted on us by the rebellion does not arise from parting with the mixed, disloyal, and half-civilized population of whites .and negroes, that inhabit the greater part of the South, nor even in the loss of territory, which, in our abundance, we could well spare; but from the establishment of a foreign power on our borders, and the opportunity given to men like Mr. Hughes to imitate Southern example, and teach disunion here. Our duty is, therefore, not only plain, but, if we are true to ourselves, within our power to accomplish.
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