ORATION. 27 course threatens ruin to the country; convince them if you can; vote them down if you can ; but do not lightly hurl the charge of treason against those whose whole hope in life is bound up in the preservation of the Union. I know that these views may not be altogether acceptable. Wholesale denunciation is cheaper and easier and more popular. But if I should fail to say this, — if I should seem to denounce as disloyal those, who have given their blood or the blood of their children for the Union, I should lack the approval of one voice, without which the applause of the world is ' altogether vanity. I spoke of the duty of hope. I call it a duty. And to me the schoolboy who plays at putting down Rebellion, and shouts to his comrades that “ we shall beat the Rebels yet,” is a truer patriot, and for this hour a better statesman than the ablest member of Congress, who can find no higher use for his talents than to depress our hopes, and divide our energies, and to paralyze our counsels. I do not mean that unreasoning and vainglorious hope, which looks for overwhelming victory whenever a brigade changes its position ; and prophesies the immediate end of Rebellion at every trifling success of our arms. That false hope, too often followed by unmanly and unpatriotic despair, has been a curse to the Nation. I mean that well-grounded confidence
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTM4ODY=