If the true position of a nation is its highest moral
attitude, then we may say that these free States were never in a better
condition than they are to-day. The end is not yet; no, and though they take
Washington, take our President prisoner, seize the archives, and install
themselves in the Capitol, that is not the end. So long as the magnificent
spirit which actuates the whole North to-day continues, the spirit of devoted
patriotism, of perfect unanimity of sentiment, of generous self-sacrifice, of
calm, quiet courage, which does not boast at the beginning nor flinch at the
end, so long the nation is safe. . . .
This is a sort of Pentecostal Day, in which the whole
multitude are of one heart and one soul; nor says any one that aught that he
possesses is his own, but we have all things in common. . . .
For the sake of national prosperity, for the sake of outward
union, for the sake of a mere mercantile peace, we have here at the North been
conniving for years at a system of despotism more cruel than exists elsewhere
on the face of the earth.
Now we are punished in just those three points. Our
prosperity has received a terrible check, our Union is dissolved, and our peace
has terminated in what threatens to be an awful war. . . .
Let us stand by each other now in these dark hours, trusting
in God's eternal justice and truth. He that is for us is more than they that be
against us.
SOURCE: Edwin Everett Hale, Editor, James Freeman
Clarke: Autobiography, Diary and Correspondence, p. 271-2
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