"Union for the sake of the Union"; "our country, our whole country, and nothing but our country";—these are the mottoes, old, stale, hackneyed, and threadbare as they may have seemed when employed as the watchwords of an electioneering campaign, but clothed with a new power, a new significance, a new gloss, and a new glory, when uttered as the battlecries of a nation struggling for existence; these are the mottoes which can give a just and adequate expression to the Cause in which you have enlisted. Sir, I thank Heaven that the trumpet has given no uncertain sound, while you have been preparing yourselves for the battle.
This is the Cause which has been solemnly proclaimed by both branches of Congress, in resolutions passed at the instance of those true-hearted sons of Tennessee and Kentucky—Johnson and Crittenden—and which, I rejoice to remember at this hour, received your own official sanction as a Senator of the United States.
This is the Cause which has been recognized and avowed by the President of the United States, with a frankness and fearlessness which have won the respect and admiration of all.
This is the Cause which has been so fervently commended to us from the dying lips of a Douglas, and by the matchless living voices of a Holt and an Everett.
This is the Cause in which the heroic Anderson, lifting his banner upon the wings of prayer,—and looking to the guidance and guardianship of the God in whom he trusted, went through that fiery furnace unharmed, and came forth, not indeed without the smell of fire and smoke upon his garments, but with an undimmed and undying lustre of piety and patriotism on his brow.
This is the Cause in which the lamented Lyon bequeathed all that he had of earthly treasure to his country, and then laid down a life in her defense, whose value no millions could measure.
This is the Cause in which the veteran chief of our armies crowned with the laurels which Washington alone had worn before him, and renouncing all inferior allegiance at the loss of fortune and of friends, has tasked, and is still tasking to the utmost the energies of a soul whose patriotism no age could chill. This is the Cause to which the young and noble McClellan, under whose lead it is your privilege to serve, has brought that matchless combination of sagacity and science, of endurance modesty, caution, and courage, which have made him the hope of the hour, the bright particular star of our immediate destiny.
And this, finally, is the Cause which has obliterated, as no other cause could have done, all divisions and distinction of party, nationality, and creed; which has appealed alike to Republican, Democrat, and Union Whig, to native citizen and to adopted citizen; and in which not the sons of Massachusetts or of New England or of the North alone, not the dwellers on the Hudson, the Delaware, and the Susquehanna only, but so many of those, also, on the Potomac and the Ohio, the Mississippi and the Missouri, on all the lakes, and in all the vast Mesopotamia of the mighty West—yes, and strangers from beyond the seas, Irish and Scotch, German, Italian, and French—the common emigrant and those who have stood nearest to a throne—brave and devoted men from almost every nation under heaven—men who have measured the value of our country to the world by a nobler standard than the cotton crop; and who realize that other and momentous destinies are at stake upon our struggle than such as can be wrought upon any mere material looms and shuttles—all, all are seen rallying beneath a common flag, and, exclaiming with one heart and voice: "The American Union—it must be, and shall be preserved." R. C. Winthrop.