106 LETTER OF LYMAN TREMAIN. ALBANY, July 1M, 1862. GENT. : I am in receipt of your invitation to address the mass meeting to be held on the 15th instant. Tt gives me great pleasure to learn that such a meeting is called. I trust it will be worthy of the great city where it will be held, worthy of the occasion, and of the noble cause in whose service it will be convened. I regret to say that an engagement to address a similar meeting in this city, the same evening, will put it beyond my power to attend. Yours truly, LYMAN TREMAIN. CHAS. GOULD, Esq , Sec. tyc. LETTER OF WM. M. EVARTS. WINDSOR, VT., July I5tk, 1862. DEAR SIR : The invitation of your committee to address the great meeting, to be held today, in the city of New-York, reached me too late for this answer, even, to be in time for the occasion. The enthusiastic rally at Union Square, on the twentieth of April of last year, demonstrated the wisdom and courage of our people in instantly meeting the war, which had been opened against the Government by the armed rebellion, with all the strength and energy which thorough and united purpose and abundant material resources could supply. From that moment the people have taken no step backward, and there has been more occasion for solicitude that they would run over the Government than that they would not keep up with its movements and demands. I have no fears now, that the response of the people to the new call for troops, will be either sluggish or inadequate. Whether in the past, the Government has fully understood the stern simplicity of this contest to which only two issues, the destruction of its enemy or of itself, were ever possible ; whether it has recognized its true enemy the rebel aristocracy and appreciated the depth and force of the passions and interests which have stimulated their hatred and support their hostilities ; whether it has wisely and effectively employed the immense power which the devotion of the people has laid at its feet ; these are questions unsuited to the situation of our affairs. " Forgetting the things that are behind." we " must press forward," and be satisfied with knowing and insisting that, in the future, the sentiments and action of the Government will be, and shall be, clear, decisive and concentrated ; seeking, what thus seeking it is sure to accomplish, the rapid and complete reduction, by military power, of the revolted territory and population to allegiance to their and our Constitution. I know that there are loyal, intelligent and earnest lovers of their country, who conceive that they have no part or heart in this war, if it be not so directed that the social institution of slavery shall not survive it, and others who imagine that they will not help put down the rebellion if slavery is to fall with it. But these opinions govern no considerable number of the loyal population ; and, indeed, if those who profess the one or the other of them, were put to the test, 1 am persuaded that the Flag and the Constitution would lose few of them as defenders. And now it is proclaimed, as with a trumpet, throughout the land, to rebels and to loyal men alike, that the burden and the heat of the war are upon us ; that our manhood and our birthright are in the issue ; and that the suu which
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