12 her if they could, even as she lay asleep, reposing in fond confidence in her children. Could that Divine power, who, when he established civil government among men, made patriotism and piety, to be identical ? could he look with indifference, look without a frown upon a rebellion that wore such a maniac look of hate to a nation and a government which he had nursed and fostered, and led with his own right hand ? He could not, and he has not; and I ask you to review with me the ways in which He has shown displeasure with rebellion. Without arrogating any merit of prowess to ourselves, or rejoicing for our own peculiar skill, let us see how God has bent back the point of the rebellion to pierce its own bosom, and dealt with the plans of our enemies, and disappointed them every one. Recall the high and boastful pretensions with which this war was plotted and begun, and then mark how an overruling power has, by a single touch, caused them, one by one, to wilt and shrink away, like some succulent shoot, made up and swollen with sap, which; when crushed between the thumb and finger, leaks out its moisture, and leaves not fibre enough for a skeleton, or a dried specimen, or a fossil. The first influence that led the rebellion to its birth, was the conviction, which was universal at the South, that the men of the Northern States
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