royed the very
existence of the fairest and most favored part of our country. In the
end, a homogeneous society will extend over the whole Union, and new
vigor will be infused into our political organization, by reason of its
recovery from the terrible disease by which it has been attacked and for
a time utterly prostrated. The alterative effects of this critical
danger overcome, and of the treatment rendered necessary, will doubtless
be one of the most important consequences of the rebellion.

The dogma of secession, as applied to our complex government, is
inconsistent with reason, and has often been effectually refuted by
argument. But sophistry, stimulated by ambition, was ever ready to renew
the controversy, and to perpetuate it in all the forms of vicious logic
and plausible ratiocination. The appeal to force, however, has done
something more than refute an argument; it has already discomfited the
whole theory, and it will not end short of the utter annihilation of the
very idea of secession as a right, and as a remedy for any evils,
fancied or real, which may be suffered or imagined under our Government.
After the close of the war, when men look back to its bloody fields and
its awful sacrifices, they will be amazed at the insane folly which
permitted them to consider the great American Union, with its honorable
history, its wonderful progress, its immense power, and its proud
standing among the nations, as a mere league among petty states, to be
dissolved at pleasure--as a thing to be broken into fragments, and to be
divided among ambitious aspirants, to be made the sport of domestic
faction, or of foreign rapacity and domination, changing its form and
proportions with every change of popular feeling and every restless
movement of popular discontent. These fatal delusions will be made to
disappear forever, and in their place there will remain in the minds of
men the image of a majestic Government, tried in the furnace of civil
war, made solid and immovable by its grand and successful efforts to
resist the threatened overthrow of its power, and becoming paternal by
the recovery of its wonted strength, which will permit and require the
exercise of magnanimous forbearance even toward those misguided citizens
who have raised their traitorous hands against it. Thus, with the awe
and fear which will be inspired by the tremendous energy put forth to
conquer the rebellion--an energy which will appear only so much the
gr