And if
this be true, then the uplifted sword of Albion is, verily, nothing but
a goose-killing knife.
'God is not dead yet.' If we are in the right, He will guide and guard
us, and they who contend for right and justice and the liberty of the
poor, first fully taught on earth by the Saviour Jesus Christ, will not
suffer in the end. When we first entered on this struggle with the
South, it was soon realized that we had undertaken the greatest struggle
of history, the reformation of the modern age, the grandest battle for
progress and against the old serpent of oppression ever known. Let them
laugh who will, but such a trial of republicanism against the last of
feudalism is this, and nothing less. God aid us! But it may be that, as
the contest widens, grander accomplishments lie before us. Whether it be
done by the sword, or by peaceful industry; whether as victors, or as
the unrighteously borne-down in our sorest hour of need,--it is not
impossible that, in one way or the other, it is yet in our destiny to
refute the monstrous theory that whatever the most powerful nation on
earth does is necessarily right, and that all considerations must yield
to its enormous interests. Such has been till the present the morality
of English and of all European diplomacy,--who will deny it? Can it be
possible that this is to last forever, and that nations are in the
onward march of progress privileged to adopt a different course from
that enjoined by God on individuals? 'Was Israel punished for this?' No,
it can not be.
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