51 presence into the serried ranks of the wearied army of the Potomac ABRAHAM LINCOLN confronting GEO. B. MCCLELLAN ? [Loud cheers for McClellan.] The embodied representative of the National authority shaking hands with the genius of American safety the great rail-splitter reproaching the railers against the noble army and its gifted chieftain. When ABRAHAM LINCOLN was nominated, I laughed at the convention ; when he was elected, I trembled for the country ; but since he has been inaugurated, I have learned to love and honor thesaan who has so faithfully wielded the National resources. [Great applause.] When the South struck at the President, they fired at a man in the stocks, cooped up in judicial decisions, bound down by legislative restrictions, warned away from all philanthropic mischief by the wholesome hostility of an adverse popular vote. They found him in quiet, helpless, party paralysis, and only left him an aroused, wounded, angry National giant, with all the resources of all parties at his command. The South sneered at our poor, under-fed, over-worked soldiers, who fled from Bull Run ; but now the world laughs at a whole community who ran away from a shadow. Our soldiers left a few arms and knapsacks on the field, while they threw away long years of happiness and prosperity. Daily are we taunted with their superiority in arms and birth. They claim WASHINGTON, as if their deeds had made him. Out of the 200,000 troops who fought in the War of the Revolution, the South did not furnish 20,000. But for the North, WASHINGTON would have gone down to posterity with a halter around his neck. It was Northern hands that moulded his Virginia clay into an immortal statue. [Sensation.] Compared with our solid successes, what have the South achieved in this war ? Two or three land checks and one steam fright. [Laughter.] The ghost of the Merrimac will haunt the nation for centuries. By diverting the base of operations from the James River, it has cost us $100,- 000,000. That sum would have built us 300 Monitors, which would have blockaded all intervention. The march of events now means the march of armies. The progress of our institutions depends at last upon the speed of our bullets ; when they rain the Union is safe, when they slacken the Union reels. War is a cruel alternative, but not more so than a peace which removes from danger without relieving us of disgrace, disorder, and disintegration. We want not lamentation over this war, but enlistments in the war. Let us shed no tears but volunteers. [Great laughter.] We cannot succeed in this gigantic war until all classes are worked up to the thrusting point. There must be a fighting man from every family and every calling ; a fighting lawyer, a fighting doctor, a fighting priest, ay, and a fighting dandy. Now is the time for white kids to redeem themselves. Now is the time for all that army of fashionable loungers who have been growling all their lives for lack of opportunity. Now is the time for them to rise, strike and be immortal. [" Good, good."] While the South have sent a thousand men to battle, we have sent a hundred. While they have mounted science to lead on their armies to victory, we have too often skipped experience and thrust politics on horseback to save the country. Twenty-three millions of people are tired of being told that they are outwitted because they are outnumbered. [Cheers.] If we fall now we will be the oddest ruin on record. Rome was four hundred years
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