ment! This is the
essential, peculiar creed of our republic. That principle is on
one side of this war; and the old doctrine of might makes right,
the necessary ground-work of all monarchies, is on the other. It
is a life-and-death conflict between all those grand, universal,
man-respecting principles, which we call by the comprehensive
term democracy, and all those partial, person-respecting,
class-favoring elements which we group together under that
silver-slippered word aristocracy. If this war does not mean
that, it means nothing.

Slavery is malignantly aristocratic, and seems therefore to
absorb all other manifestations of the principle into itself. It
is Pharaoh's lean kine, which devour all the others of their
species, and yet are no better favored than before. But if
slavery were dead to-day, aristocracy might still grind our
republic to powder. Men may cease to be slaves, and yet not be
enfranchised. Although they are no longer bondmen, yet they may
be governed without their own consent. But when you deny the
universal enfranchisement of our people, you deny the one
distinctive principle of our Government, and the only essential,
fore-ordained fact in the future of our national institutions. We
do not at all comprehend this.

There was one who builded wiser than he knew, Emerson says, and I
think that result is not uncommon. The little Indian boy in the
pleasant fable, who ran on eagerly in advance of his migrating
tribe, to plant his single, three-cornered beech-nut in the
center of a great prairie, scarcely foresaw the many acres of
heavy timber which was to confront the white pioneer hundreds of
years afterward, as the outgrowth of his childish deed. Many
soldiers are fighting our battles upon a basis broader than they
know. There are men who believe that they are solely engaged in
putting down the rebellion; others are maintaining the disputed
courage and honor of the "mudsills"; some are fighting to uphold
our present Northern civilization and its institutions; and a
handful have set out definitely to carry these into the South, to
give them to the slave, and to the master also, in spite of
himself. All love the Union, and are ready to fight, perhaps to
die, for it. Aye! but what does that mean? Something as
antagon