en urn of history,' without appeal thenceforth, great will
be the glory or the shame of the prominent actors in the drama now
enacting before the eyes of the world.

What is the spectacle that our astonished eyes behold? The Genius of
Liberty, standing on the threshold of her besieged temple, pale,
fettered, betrayed in the house of her very friends, but resolute and
dauntless as ever, her eye calm and steadfast, her hand firmly grasping
the Magna Charta of our birthright, and the birthright of all the race.
While a raging and vindictive foe bays her in front, and the leal and
true are pressing in countless hosts around her at her call, a false and
craven crew are basely creeping in at undefended passages, and, with
lies and slanders and deceitful tongues, endeavoring to undermine the
foundations of her strength. Base sappers and miners! Thank God ye are
few! And the number of the people ye are trying to hoodwink and seduce
from their allegiance is hourly growing less, as your cunningly devised
schemes explode. Do ye not know that the people of the Free States are
loyal to the core? That great principles are invincible as fate, say
rather, Providence? and that those who will not move in their onward
course must be overwhelmed beneath the wheels of their triumphal
chariot? Do ye not fear the award of posterity? Let the partisan press
of to-day, and those who inspirit and sustain it here at the North, who
are vainly and impotently trying to turn back the tide of human progress
by aiding and abetting the vilest rebellion against a good government
that has been seen since Satan, that arch rebel, chose 'rather to reign
in hell than serve in heaven,' shudder at the report the unerring tongue
of history will give them, even if they care nought for the good of
humanity as bound up in the well being of this land. I have called these
men _few_, for it _cannot be_ that the great and time-honored
organization of which I hope these men are but the calumniators,
boasting the grand old names of Jefferson and Jackson as founders, and
enrolling in its ranks so many thousands of the substantial yeomanry and
solid men of the country, will really prove false to its name and trust,
and be willing to descend into history in the robe of horror and infamy
which, like the fabled shirt of Nessus, would cling to it forever as the
country's betrayer, if it shall not shake itself free from these vile
contaminators. No party could survive the weight