23 We are coming to a time when the moral power of the nation will be tried as it has never been, when every muscle will be strained, — a time in which, if we conquer in this strife, questions are to be decided as grave as ever agitated the mind of patriot or statesman. The question of the rights of States, of what is the cement of the nation, is to be forever settled ; the question who are to be citizens when rebellion owns loyalty, who are to pay the bills, and who to be punished. Then will be the time of our danger ; then will the integrity of the nation be tried. We will have orations based upon the one feeling of generosity to the vanquished, and the reestablishment of fraternal sympathy. Homes desolated, towns burnt, beggared aristocrats, ruined States, will be strong arguments with which to hush the demands of justice. There will be property to be confiscated, traitors to be hung, men to be freed, law to be honored, — all under the sun of peace, and in the pride of conquest. Then will be the danger that the principles of truth, the value of law, and the honor of God, will be prostrated in the path of folly. The sentiment of retributive justice is rising up in the hearts of the thinking nation, ■ and demands to be regarded. There is a certain trembling in the hearts of true men, for fear that treason will be treated in the property and persons of its chief supporters and instigators, in a manner which will make them light things in the minds of the people — rather as a freak of conscience than as a death-meriting villainy. There is a fear, that prejudice against the black man and sympathy with his master will outweigh the principles of justice upon which the safety of our nation depends ; that slavery will be left with its old rights, too sacred a thing for the touch of Liberty ; that Northern blood
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