Are we then mightier than that scattered folk,
That fringe of clingers by the sea-beach froth
Whose loins begat us? Let to-morrow show
If their stern arts hereditary grow.
LIFT UP YOUR HEARTS
ANONYMOUS
Sursum corda. We have in our own time seen the Republic survive an irrepressible conflict, sown in the blood and marrow of the social order. We have seen the Federal Union, not too strongly put together in the first place, come out of a great war of sections stronger than when it went into it, its faith renewed, its credit rehabilitated, and its flag saluted with love and homage by sixty millions of God-fearing men and women, thoroughly reconciled and homogeneous. We have seen the Federal Constitution outlast the strain, not merely of a Reconstructory ordeal and a Presidential impeachment, but a disputed count of the Electoral vote, a Congressional deadlock, and an extra constitutional tribunal, yet standing firm against the assaults of its enemies, while yielding itself with admirable flexibility to the needs of the country and the time. And finally we saw the gigantic fabric of the Federal Government transferred from the hands that held it a quarter of a century to other hands, without a protest, although so close was the poll in the final count that a single blanket might have covered both contestants for the Chief Magisterial office. With such a record behind us, who shall be afraid of the future?
The young manhood of the country may take this lesson from those of us who lived through times that did indeed try men’s souls—when, pressed down from day to day by awful responsibilities and suspense, each night brought a terror with every thought of the morrow, and when, look where we would, there were light and hope nowhere—that God reigns and wills, and that this fair land is and has always been in His own keeping.
The curse of slavery is gone. It was a joint heritage of woe, to be wiped out and expiated in blood and flame. The mirage of the Confederacy has vanished. It was essentially bucolic, a vision of Arcadie, the dream of a most attractive economic fallacy. The Constitution is no longer a rope of sand. The exact relation of the States to the Federal Government, left open to double construction by the authors of our organic being, because they could not agree among themselves, and union was the paramount object, has been clearly and definitely fixed by the three last amendments to the original chart, which constitute the real treaty of peace between the North and the South, and seal our bonds as a nation forever.
The Republic represents at last the letter and the spirit of the sublime Declaration. The fetters that bound her to the earth are burst asunder. The rags that degraded her beauty are cast aside. Like the enchanted princess in the legend, clad in spotless raiment and wearing a crown of living light, she steps in the perfection of her maturity upon the scene of this, the latest and proudest of her victories, to bid welcome to the world.