Year: 1866

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of struggle for national existence
is ended, and we have celebrated
our thanksgiving to God for deliv-
erance. The war administrations
of both Nation and State have gone
by, and we have begun an era of
peace with its new duties and new
responsibilities. We have proven
that our Government is strong
enough to resist the most formi-
dable efforts to destroy it by force,
and we are now to show whether it
has such vitality that it can assimi,
late the different elements com
prised under its rule, and harmonize
the antagonisms necessarily re-
naming after so fierce a strife.


For years all our energies and
our resources have been devoted to
the simple duty of subduing great
rebellion; and what was demanded
of us was undaunted courage and
obstinate determination, concen-
trating our will and our power upon
the single purpose before us, and
refusing to be turned aside for any
other object till that was thoroughly
accomplished. Now we have put
off the h arness Of war; the grand
army which saved the republic is
disbanded; its veterans have been
quietly absorbed into the mass of
their fellow-citizens, and all are
now intefftly studying the problem
of changing a Union restored by
force, into one whose permanence
shall be guaranteed by mutual
good will and common interests,
and be based upon universal free
dom and genuine republicanism.
To do this will demand qualities of
head and heart quite as high as any
that have been called into exercise
hitherto, and if we succeed in find
ing the solution we seek, we shall
prove that the victories of peace
are far greater than those of war.
On the one hand are the dangers of
receiving into full participation in
the Government those who have
been stalking everything upon its
overthrow; and upon the other, the
obligations we are under to the
whole world to adhere to those
doctrines OF Democratic liberty and
equality which lie at the foundation
of our system; whilst our relations
to the unfortunate African race,
whose slavery we have abolished
and whose freedom we are sacredly
bound to protect, come in to com
plicate both classes of difficulties.


Congress and the President are
now at work upon the details of
complete restoration of civil gov
ernment in the States lately rebel
lious, and we, in common in the
whole country, are watching their
progress with the most earnest
hope that they may speedily agree
upon national policy which shall
thoroughly accord with the highest
interests of the whole land. do
not regard this a proper time to
discuss specific measures which are
before our federal legislature and
authorities, but all our public acts
in our State organizations, as we'll
as in our National capacity, must
be more or less modified by circum-
stances shaped by the great war in
which we have been engaged, and
it seems necessary therefore, as a
preparation for every species of
public duty, that we should look
with special care at any dangerous
tendencies the war may have de-
veloped and recall the general
principles which should guide our
actions as servants of the people.


1t is in the excitement of great
struggle that the institutions of a
country are in the most danger of
change, and perhaps no nation has
ever passed through such convul-
sion as ours and then returned to
the principles of government and
exact form of constitution which it
had before. The maxims that revo-
lutions do not go backward, has
seemed to have even a wider and
deeper significance than has been
popularity given to it. The same
law of progression which has made
the convulsions of monarchical
governments tend toward the de-
velopment Of popular liberty, has
in republics too often led to des-
potism of classes or of factions, and
thence by easy stages to anarchy
and utter disruption. Avictorious
majority, flushed with its triumph,
finds it easy to forget the rights of
minorities and that it remains for
us to. prove whether, in our day,