uffered in both sections, in
consequence of this most unnatural and fratricidal war? The most
ordinary charity would lead to the belief, that if the mighty woes which
have followed in the bloody path of the rebellion could have been
anticipated, even the bold, bad leaders, and still more the infatuated
people, would have suffered much and hesitated long before assuming the
dread responsibility. Hate itself, though reenforced and supported by
all other passions of a fiendish nature, would have stood aghast at the
overwhelming avalanche of horrors which hung ready to be precipitated on
our unhappy country. It is hardly within the limits of human depravity,
that evils of such magnitude, attended by such world-wide results,
should be attributable to the deliberate will and arbitrary action of
even the worst members of the human family. For the credit of our common
humanity, let it be admitted that the authors of the fatal movement did
really believe In their avowed doctrine of peaceable secession, and that
they could not have had the least idea of the immense proportions the
civil war was destined to assume, nor of the extent of ruin and misery
it would necessarily drag in its horrid train. And if the prominent
leaders did not intend all the sad consequences of their wicked act of
treason, still less can they be considered personally responsible for
the fatal popular enthusiasm which has so thoroughly sustained them in
their section. Though full of hate and animated by a spirit of infernal
mischief, they had not the capacity to stir a nation so profoundly,
except from the fact that they were dealing with minds already well
prepared for their impassioned appeal, and with elements which had been
wrought into discord by causes long preexisting.

In the midst of this stupendous conflict, individuals seem to be as
insignificant and powerless to control it, as if they stood, awed and
subdued by the warring elements of nature, and compelled to wait until
these should expend their fury and of themselves subside. Thirty
millions of people have been suddenly and unexpectedly divided, and the
sundered parts have been thrown into fierce and deadly antagonism.
Belligerent passions rage and boil among them with all the ungovernable
power of the angry waves when the sea is lashed by the destructive
tempest. The throes of the suffering nation are as terrible as those of
the trembling earth, when, by some internal convulsion, its very
found