The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, August, 1864, page 168 by Various Authors
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rought us face to face with realities the most terrible the world has ever beheld. It has measured our strength and our weakness, and has developed within us the mightiest intellectual and physical resources. All the wit and virtue which go to make up a great people have been proven in a hundred times and ways during the war, to exist in us. Courage, forethought, endurance, self-sacrifice, magnaminity, and a noble sense of honor, are a few of the virtues which we have cropped from the bloody harvest of the battle field.
It is true that wicked men are among us--for when did a company, godly or otherwise, engage in any work, and Satan did not also fling his wallet over his shoulder and set out with them for evil purposes of his own?--but after all, these are but a small minority, and their efforts to ruin the republic and bring defeat and dishonor upon the Federal arms, have not yet proved to be of a very formidable nature. These, the enemies of America, though her native-born sons, the people can afford to treat with the contempt which they merit. For the rest, this war will make us a nation, and bind us together with bonds as strong as those of the old European nationalities. It will make us great, and loving patriots also; and root out from among us a vast amount of sham and political fraud, to the great bettering of society.
We shall have reason in many ways to bless its coming and its consequences. It was indeed just as necessary to our future national life and happiness as the bursting out of a volcano is to the general safety of the earth. It will destroy slavery for ever, and thus relieve us from the great contention which has so long and so bitterly occupied the lives of our public men and the thoughts of the world. In reality, we have never yet given republicanism a fair trial upon this continent. With that dreadful curse and crime of slavery tearing at its heart and brain, how was it possible for equality and self-government to be anything else but a delusion and a mockery? This cleared o