20 responsibilities resultant upon ultimate victory become strong probabilities, it is asking the people what they want. And now is the time they should make themselves heard, from mountain and valley, from one end of the land to the other, through every channel by which a nation speaks — to demand the doing of things which, if left now, may be left undone, to our eternal undoing. The chief dangers to which we will be exposed, in case of ultimate victory — which is now placed beyond reasonable doubt, although some reverses may yet be experienced, and much fighting may yet be done — are those which arise from victory itself. In the hour of triumph, if men are not cruel, they are apt to be foolishly magnanimous. Ever prone to extremes, if the hour of victory is not dishonored by the glutting of vengeance, its glory is apt to be diminished by the effeminate doings of a false and ostentatious magnanimity, more regardful of the light in wjiich they stand in the eyes of a vanquished foe, than how they appear in the sight of justice and of God. As Ahab when he rode a conqueror, with the acclamations of a victorious army in his ears, when he meets the vanquished king, God appointed to destruction, bowing before him in abject submission, with a rope around his neck, he hails him as “ brother,” seats him in his chariot, and ratifies a treaty with him, and remembers no more the God who gave him the victory, or the interests of that kingdom and that truth in consideration of which it was given, and God passed the sentence, “ thy life shall go for his life, and thy people for his people.” To us in case of ultimate victory this danger is peculiarly imminent. Whilst it is true that the great mass of men in the free states are loyal to the national flag, it is not true that a large majority are loyal to the great principles it
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