the opening of hostilities it became obvious, and by none more quickly discerned than by the ingenuous and independent volunteer, that the one thing absolutely essential for enduring union and peace was the acknowledgment of the equality of all, and their right to enfranchisement. The moral sense of the nation, which had become more keen by war, the alternations of the cause oscillating between victory and defeat, the talk of the volunteers about the camp fires, the judgment of the world, the visible tokens of the Divine will combined to aggravate and heighten the demand for a completed republic under universal emancipation, and a homogeneous people under universal suffrage. And then, repose. It has come, but it could only have come after war. It needed the tramp of armies to break down the prejudices rooted by the vicious overgrowth of an hundred years and twining about the very body of the Constitution. We might as well suppose that after months of torrid heat and vapor, rolling vegetable life to a scroll, the God of nature would clear the atmosphere without the agency of electric sublimity and destruction, as believe that the current of national vice of a century could be changed, and the institutions grounded in the mercenary passions of many generations could be overturned, without the vicissitudes and agonies of protracted war.

Out of the war has come another reform in the interpretation of the powers of the government which never would have been won in peace. We have learned at last that the sovereignty of the nation is greater than the sovereignty of the States. We tried that question under the civil experience of eighty years without reaching a settlement. The

Revolution found us united, but only for a special purpose, and the Declaration of Independence, though grand as a war-cry, was by no means a bond of government. The Confederation which followed proved only a joint stock association, liable to dissolution at any moment, because it established no central power to raise revenue, or enforce a treaty, or compel a State. It was rich enough for individual liberty, but was poverty as a unit of sovereignty. It sprang out of provincialism, and came only to statism, and not to nationality. It was something splendid as a stage of progress, but could be nothing as a consummation. Then, as a consequence, came the Constitution. Singularly enough, Madison, the champion of the Constitution, gave to his own work its first and worst construction of weakness in the Virginia resolutions of "ninety-eight." Those resolutions, coupled since with African slavery, have been the cause of our war. When, long afterwards, Webster, in reply to Hayne, put forth the only construction under which this Union could live, Madison, then an old man, explained away the resolutions of "ninety-eight;" but it was too late, the mischief had begun its irresistible work. The same school of interpretation continued, and under the authority of its great master, Calhoun, it outlived the argument of Webster, the denunciation of Clay, the invective of Adams, and took its last animate form and articulate expression in James Buchanan. In the expiring hours of his administration he led the way to the opening of war by promulgating to the world once more, and for the last time, that the national sovereignty was powerless before the sovereignty of the States; and with these parting words he retired from the capitol to his eternal retreat. He closed

the doors of the old school forever, and it only remained for Abraham Lincoln to open the doors of the new.

And now, after all these years of the strife of opinions and of arms, we have come to the opportunity of gratitude for the establishment of the central authority of this Union, of the sovereignty of unity over its parts, of the oneness and indestructibility of American nationality. This has been an open question before, and never could have been solved until the disputants at the South as well as at the North should acknowledge it to be solved; and the ordeal of fire and blood alone could bring them to such acknowledgment. And that time has arrived. They who resisted the idea of the dominant authority of the federal principle by a war of words for seventy years, and by a war of arms for four years which seemed longer than the seventy before, are in substantial agreement with other sections in accepting this trial of battle as the finality. They have entered with us all upon reconstruction with acknowledgment of the establishment of federal authority; disputed before, but conceded at length; claimed by Hamilton, but frittered quite away by Madison; demonstrated by Webster, but surrendered by Buchanan; established now, if anything can be said to be established, for all coming time by the hearts and by the arms of the people. Nothing exceeds in grandeur the settlement of this disputed question. It proves that the silence of the Constitution, which all over the world has been accounted its weakness, was destined under Providence to become its strength. Whatever shall be the number of States between the Atlantic and the Pacific, they shall live and

govern under one common authority and under one common flag.

Looking back to the events of the contest we find there a new school for the national character. I am not afraid of seeming to touch upon the delicate ground of military glory. The renown of martial deeds is better than national decay. The necessity had become imminent and overshadowing for some fresh infusion in the sluggish and turbid current of the national spirit. Inglorious sloth was to be broken by virtuous activity. For half a century with scarcely any interruption, we had been harvesting the fruits of prosperous peace, but we had also garnered into the treasury of the heart a large mixture of the noxious growths which spring up in a long period of social inertia. The atmosphere was heavy with the overspread and far-stretching vapors rising from the malarial luxuriance of the broad level of materialistic life, and the blast of war came to inspire, to change and to purify. The politics and ambitions of the time were composed, so to speak, of two or three stratified periods of compromise and bargain, immutable principles exchanged for transient repose, when the war fell to startle the fallen virtue of the people to manly self-sacrifice and heroism. In such a change the whole nation became a school of honor, of noble aspirations, of exalted sentiments. The air grew fragrant with courage, decision, manliness and rectitude, and a new generation rose stocked with exhilarating lessons and examples. You may deplore, you must deplore, the necessity of so terrible an agency of reformation, but you recognize in it the hand of the God of your fathers. you ask in what sense moral and social good can come

If

from these feats of arms, from the trials and suffering of that dread ordeal, the answer is, good in the very manifestation of greatness, of enterprise, of valor, of suffering; good in the shape of bright and stimulating examples offered to the contemplation of the next generation. The line of uninterrupted uniformity connecting the ages of a nation may conduct to riches and contentment, but the danger is that it will become a contentment of mercenary and obtuse sentiments even worse than the shock of martial magnetism. Certain it is that the Almighty has so dealt with us, and with all the other nations of modern power.

Nor do I limit my estimate of the moral stimulation of the late conflict to the rugged half of our population. In no less degree has it been a stimulating educator to the other sex, formed to gentle manners and trained to a merciful religion. No former generation, of Spartan or Roman fame, has better illustrated the whole circle of grace and beneficence than the women of America throughout that dark and troubled period. Under all defeats and discouragements, not any utterance of doubt nor sign of dissension among the sterner sex, nor any degree of grief or sacrifice brought home to their own hearts, for a moment disturbed in the women of this country "the firm and settled purpose of their souls to undergo all and to do all that the meekest patience, the noblest resolution, and the highest trust in God could enable human beings to suffer or to perform." The moral and social heroism which the war called into activity, elevating men and women to higher spheres of thought and action than any they had moved in before, will live