in" of the
Rebellion,--the total depravity and innate heinousness, to use
theological terminology, without which there could not have been
treason, secession, and rebellion.

But forgetting all this,--looking constantly at effect, without
searching for cause,--hearing only the drum-beat of the armed legions of
the South mustering for the overthrow of the nation,--wilfully shutting
our ears to the clanking of the chains of the slave-coffle,--deaf to the
prayer, "How long, O Lord?" uttered morning, noon, and night by men and
women who were turned back to bondage from our lines,--forgetting that
Justice and Right are the foundations of the throne of God,--the army of
General McDowell marched confidently out to Bull Run on its way to
Richmond, and returned to Washington defeated, routed, disorganized,
humiliated. And yet we now see that to the South the victory which set
the whole Confederacy on flame was a defeat, and to the North that which
seemed an overwhelming disaster was a triumph; for so God changes the
warp and woof of human events. The Southern leaders became
over-confident. They could have taken Washington, but did not make the
attempt to do so till the golden moment had passed, never to return. "We
have let Washington slip through our fingers," was the bitter
lamentation of the "Richmond Examiner," a few days after the Battle of
Bull Run,--after the second uprising of the people to save the Union.

When God takes a proud and wayward nation in hand, and instructs it by
the hard lessons of adversity,--by plans overthrown, ambition checked,
pride humiliated, and hopes disappointed, which wring tears from the
eyes of widows and orphans, and by which men in the prime of life are
bowed down to the grave with grief for sons slain in battle,--He does it
for a great purpose. But the nation was blind to the moral of the
terrible lesson. We are slow to receive and accept eternal truths. And
so, instead of aiming at Slavery as the life of the Rebellion, McClellan
marched up the Peninsula through the mud to capture Richmond, and
conquer a peace simply by taking the Rebel capital. He was learned in
military lore, had visited Europe, and made war after the European
pattern. But in a war of ideas and principles, the mere taking of an
enemy's capital cannot end the contest. In such a strife there is the
war of invisible forces,--the marshalling of Cherubim and Seraphim
against rebellious hosts,--the old contest of the heavenly