rity for all.' That was Abraham Lincoln.
He was driven into the war reluctantly. At first, he tried to
prevent it, and would not see the necessity for it. He ridiculed
it, and believed that the time would speedily come when all the
excitement springing up in the south would pass away.

"But the inevitable and irrepressible conflict was upon him, and
he met the responsibility with courage and sagacity. A higher
power than Abraham Lincoln, a power that rules and governs the
universe of men, decreed the war as a necessary and unavoidable
event, to prepare the way for a new south and a new north, and a
more perfect Union. The war did come as a scourge and a resurrection.
Grant was the commander of the Union armies, and at the close of
the war more than what we had hoped for at the beginning was
accomplished. When the war commenced no man among those in public
life contemplated or expected the speedy abolition of slavery in
the District of Columbia, and in the United States of America. I
can say that, the winter before the war commenced, no man in public
life in Washington expected the untold benefits and good that have
come to mankind as the result of the war, by the Act of Emancipation
--unforeseen then, but thankfully appreciated now, by the whole
American people; even by the masters of the slaves.

"Now fellow-citizens, the new south is founded upon the ruins of
the old. It inherits the prejudices, the institutions and some of
the habits of the old south. No wise man will overlook this, and
should not expect that the southern people will at once yield to
the logic of events; but every patriotic man ought to do his utmost
to bring about, as soon as possible, a cheerful acquiescence in
the results of the war. You cannot in a single generation, much
less a single decade, change the ideas of centuries. And, therefore,
we must not be impatient with the new south. And we who come from
the north must not expect them at once to lay aside all ideas with
which they were born and which they inherited from their ancestors
for generations. Therefore, it was to be expected that the south
would be somewhat disturbed, and would be somewhat slow in their
movements; that it must be born again and live an infancy and take
its ordinary course in human life. It must grow as Topsy grew.
Remember, at that time, before the war, this country was a confederacy,
not of states, but a confederacy of sections. There were but two
par