21 has been said to illustrate, and guard from misrepresentation, our simple thoughts. We have attempted no commendation of war; we have not said that self-considered, it is not ever and only a great and sore evil. We have only insisted that, terrible as it is, yet life, may have greater evils—that anarchy is a greater; that the dismemberment and destruction of this fair heritage is a greater ; that to live without a country, or a government, or an earthly future for ourselves and our children is a greater ; that to be strippped by traitorous hands of all that renders life enjoyable or endurable is a greater; that just here and now to pause in our national progress, and suffer our free institutions to fail, and the American name, with all its traditionary glory, and all its fair promise unto oppressed humanity, to become an offence and a scorn unto a gain-saying, or a disappointed world — that all this is immeasureably worse than any evils war itself can bring. We believe, indeed, that just this conflict is a great philosophic necessity in our national progress—sure to occur at some time, best to occur now—that it is only a mysteriously merciful dispensation of Providence working out for us, through much tribulation, the integrity of a strong national life in the present, and in the future an enduring and far more excellent glory. We, perhaps, may not live to witness the end of the conflict. Indeed there are some men who, in view of our present rate of progress, have little hope
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