to long in vain for that open
sea which is the only pathway to fortune and to glory.

Equally idle with the claim that the Union party is foreclosed from now
dealing with the Rebel States as seceded, because four years ago it
declared that they had no right to secede, is the assertion that the
object of the war was proclaimed to be for the restoration of the Union
and the Constitution as they were. Even were we to admit that 1861 is
the same thing as 1866, the question comes back again to precisely the
point that is at issue between the President and Congress, namely, What
is the wisest way of restoring the Union? for which both profess
themselves equally anxious. As for the Constitution, we cannot have
that as it was, but only as its framers hoped it would be, with its one
weak and wicked element excluded. But as to Union, are we in favor of a
Union in form or in fact? of a Union on the map and in our national
style merely, or one of ideas, interests, and aspirations? If we cannot
have the latter, the former is a delusion and a snare; and the strength
of the nation would be continually called away from prosperous toil to
be wasted in holding a wolf by the ears, which would still be a wolf,
and known by all our enemies for such, though we called heaven and
earth to witness, in no matter how many messages or resolves, that the
innocent creature was a lamb. That somebody has a right to dictate some
kind of terms is admitted by Mr. Johnson's own repeated action in the
matter; but who that somebody should be, whether a single man, of whose
discretion even his own partisans are daily becoming more doubtful, or
the immediate representatives of that large majority of the States and
of the people who for the last five years have been forced against
their will to represent and to be the United States, is certainly too
grave an affair to be settled by that single man himself.

We have seen to what extremes the party calling itself Conservative has
hinted its willingness to go, under the plea of restored Union, but
with the object of regained power. At Philadelphia, they went as far as
they publicly dared in insinuating that the South would be justified in
another rebellion, and their journals have more than once prompted the
President to violent measures, which would as certainly be his ruin as
they would lead to incalculable public disaster. The President himself
has openly announced something like a design of forcibly suppressi