Bellows Falls times. [volume] (Bellows Falls, Vt.) 1856-1965, 1868-12-25
,rhc New York Tribune for 1860.


try has triumphantly passed through
the gravest aud most trying perils
which have confronted her since her
Independence was acknowledged. She
has indicated beyond appeal her right
to be regarded as no mere contederacy
or league of Jealous, envious, discordant
States, but as substantially and perma-
nently Nation, wherein the pretensions
of no part can be admitted or upheld in
opposition to the integrity, the para
mount authority, of the One Republic
The right of each man, by virtue of
his birth or his naturalization as citi-
zen of the United States, to the full en-
joyment of life, liberty, and the pur-
suit of happiness" until he shall forfeit
the right by crime, Is also established ON
impregnable foundations. Our fathers
proclaimed it in justifying their separa-
ton from Great Britain; it was left to
us to establish as fact what they mere
ly affirmed as principle. What the
cannon of Saratoga and Yorktown pro-
claimed as an abstraction, the cannon OF
Gettysburg, Vicksburg, and Five Forks
established as living, embodied, enact
ed truth. Widesyss q, our flag now floats,
still more widely as it may float hereat-
ter, there is, there can henceforth be, no
legal master, no tettered slave. Wrongs
and abuses, servility and oppression, may
still exist; but the Federal Constitution
is no longer their shield, and the folds of
our flag no longer emblazon nor seek to
conceal lie. The humblest American,
so long as he violates no law, is master
of his own limbs and the sole owner of
all he can honestly earn.
OF these immense results, the impor-
lance and the benefcence will become
more palpable with every added year
Distance is required to enable us to mea-
sure and appreciate the magnitude of
four millions of shackles, stricken from
the SCARED limbs of our countrymen,
which form the enduring monument of
our struggle and our triumph. New
\ arts, new industries, new developments
of natural wealth, too long UNDECIDED
and unvalued, will year by year stand
| forth in attestation that none of us has
yet adequately realized the magnitude
| and the benignity of our National victo-
ry.
No great good is ever achieved with
out effort or without cost. Four years of
patriotic struggle and sacrifice, half
million of men slain in battle or dying
of the privations and exposures Of war,
millions of bereaved ones, five billions of
property destroyed, and nearly three bill;
lions of debt incurred, attest the magni-
tude of the contest and the unyielding
valor of the combatants.
AT length, the smoke rises from the
hard-won field, showing that the last in
trenchment has been carried. The cleo
ton of Grant and Colfax gives assurance
| that the storm is over-that the bow OF
| promise arches the sky. There are still
obstacles to surmount perils to avert
noble ends to be achieved but the ship
of State has ridden out the tempest and
7 has her haven full in view. The seven
States reconstructed under the recent
acts of Congress will stand, and will be
7 followed by the three that have hitherto
stood aloof; the rights of the freedmen
will be upheld and respected, and impair
tial suffrage throughout the land will
soon plant them on foundations that can
\ not be shaken.
/ The Tribune will contend, in the flu
ture as in the past, for universal amnes
ty as well as for impartial suffrage. Il
has no faith in vengeance, in proscrip
ton, in confiscation, nor in the shedding
of blood otherwise than in actual and
necessary war. There is time fol-
J War and a time for Peace" and the lat.
ter follows swiftly on the heels of the
| former. Whenever those who fought
/ against the Union shall have in good
! faith given up the contest, they are nc
longer our foes but our countrymen.
| In the joyful trust that Grants cleo
ton has given the death-blow to Ku
Klux Klans, and all manner of outrage:
on Unionists and Freedmen as such, and
that impartial suffrage will no longer b.
seriously resisted, we hope to see the
next four years signalized by an UMPIRE
cedented expansion of the national in
dustry and consequent increase of the
national wealth. We hope to see new
cabins dot the prairie, new clearing
chequer the forest, new mills, factories
furnaces, erected, North, South, East an,
West, until our annual product shall b.
hundreds of millions greater than a
present, while mines of iron and of coal
of gold, silver, copper, &C., shall b.
! opened and worked, with AN energy an,
L 20 II i n