48 civil wars a struggle between two classes of society, living together, where the one seeks to get the mastery over the other and establish a form of government ; but it is one part of a country enjoying in every respect the same political privileges which insists upon breaking off territorially, and which for that purpose has arrayed itself in open war against the other. [Cheers.] The thing which most nearly resembles it is the division of the once compact Republic of Colombia into the now insignificant States of Ecuador, New Grenada and Venezuela, with the fruitful lesson which that furnishes in the miserable state of anarchy now prevailing in these distracted and wretched countries. We have scarcely yet risen in the North to the full consciousness of the magnitude of the struggle in which we are engaged. We have not fully comprehended the momentous consequences which are involved and the vital and disastrous effects upon us if we fail to succeed. In this struggle, which to us is for existence, we have a task upon us equivalent to the conquering of a nation. [Cheers.] We have from the beginning undervalued the capacity and power of resistance on the part of the South, and have men now in Congress, who believe that the South is to be conquered by the enactment of laws [laughter and cheers] Congressional doctors ignorant enough to think that an armed rebellion of eight millions of people can be put down by the passage of statutes. We have not realized the extent of resources that is demanded of money, of men, and of the material of war. As a peaceful people, suddenly roused up, we have displayed extraordinary energy, and in so short a space of time have put forth an extent of naval and military strength almost incredible. [Cheers.] But great as has been our effort, that of the South has been greater. She has drafted the whole of her available population, determined to overmatch us by the promptitude with which she has brought troops into the field. She is said to have two hundred and twenty thousand men now at Richmond, while we have not half that number. She has made a last great effort ; and, should we pause here, it will be, on her part, a successful one. We will be beaten, humiliated and disgraced. All that we have hitherto done will have gone for nothing, and we will retire from the contest with a contracted territory and a gigantic load of debt, which of itself will be a reason for one part of the country to shift it off upon the other by acts of dismemberment and separation. To avert these calamities, a call is made by the Government upon the country for three hundred thousand men ; and if that call is promptly responded to, the suppression of the rebellion will be but a question of time. [Cheers.] It will soon be seen whether our people are, or are not, equal to the great emergency which now calls upon them to act. If they fail in this crisis, then the South are, as they have claimed to be, our masters. They will triumph in the consciousness that they have chafed into submission those artisans, tradesmen and laborers of the North. We are masters upon the water, but on the land the heart of this rebellion has not yet been reached, and it will not be unless this levy is raised. If this call is responded to, and three hundred thousand men rapidly put in the field we shall be armed in a double sense : First, it will secure us against foreign intervention [loud cheers] ; and, secondly, we shall accomplish what we undertook to do when we first rose to the defence of our government and our flag. The season, being the time of harvest, is
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