22 ORATION. And the firm Russian’s purpose brave Was bartered by a timorous slave, Even then dishonor’s peace he spurned, The sullied olive-branch returned, Stood for his country’s glories fast, And nailed her colors to the mast.” In that spirit all the North should be to-day, as one man for the Union. Never had men such motives as Americans now have for unbounded devotion to country. A great weight of glory urges us on. An unfathomable gulf of infamy and despair awaits us if we fail. It is no less true because we have heard it so often—it is the more true because we have almost forgotten it, that on the issue of this contest hang all our earthly hopes. If disunion prevails we can only look forward to new disunions, to border war, to civil war, to foreign domination, to usurpation, to anarchy, to all manner of desolation. To-night the loving father, as he looks upon his sleeping children, may well say, “ if this Rebellion triumphs, it were better for, them that they had never been born.” Even now a foreign reviewer looks for, “ the dim headlands of new empire,” that are to emerge from the stormy sea in which the Union has sunk. He speaks of new disintegration of the • Union as certain, and gloats over the prospect, that this war, with all its horrors, is only the first act in a grand drama of *
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTM4ODY=