duty, conscientiously undertaken, any duty from
which there is no honorable or honest escape, must, if faithfully
performed, obtain its meet reward. And believing that this business of
war has been undertaken by the mass of the people of these United States
in all simplicity of heart and honesty of purpose, as an unavoidable and
hard necessity, he also believes they will get their honest wages for
the doing it. He believes, too, that the day of recompense is not
entirely delayed; that benefits, large and excellent, have already
resulted to the nation. He sees already visible uses, which, to some
extent at least, should comfort and sustain a people, even under the
awful curse and agony of a civil war. He writes to show these uses to
others, that they too may take heart and hope, when the days are
darkest.

In the first place, this war is, at last, our _national independence_.
To be sure, we read of a war carried on by our fathers to secure that
boon. They paid a large price for it, and they got it, and got all
nations to acknowledge they deserved it, including the great nation they
fought with. It was their _political_ independence only. It secured
nothing beyond that. _Morally_ we were not independent. _Socially_, we
were not independent. There was a time, we can all remember it, when we
literally trembled before every cockney that strangled innocent
aspirates at their birth. We had not secured our moral independence of
Europe, and particularly not of our own kindred and people. We literally
crouched at the feet of England, and begged for recognition like a poor,
disowned relation. We scarcely knew what was right till England told us.
We dare not accept a thing as wise, proper, or becoming till we had
heard her verdict. What will England say? How will they think of this
across the water? In all emergencies these were the questions thought,
at least, if not spoken. We lived in perpetual terror of transatlantic
opinion. Some cockney came to visit us. He might be a fool, a puppy, an
intolerably bore, an infinite ass. It made no difference. He rode our
consciousness like a nightmare. He and his note book dominated free
America. 'What does he think of us? What will he say of us?' We actually
grovelled before the creature, more than once begging for his good word,
his kindly forbearance, his pity for our faults and failures. 'We know
we are wicked, for we are republicans, O serene John! We are sinful, for
we have no parish b