all bow again. At no
time in the annals of the nation has there been a more auspicious moment
to retrieve the one false step of the fathers in their concessions to
slavery. The Constitution has been repudiated and the compact broken by
the southern traitors now in arms. The firing of the first gun on Sumter
released the North from all constitutional obligations to slavery. It
left the government, for the first time in our history, free to carry
out the declaration of our Revolutionary fathers, and made us in fact
what we ever have claimed to be, a nation of freemen.

"The Union as it was"--a compromise between barbarism and
civilization--can never be restored, for the opposing principles of
freedom and slavery can not exist together. Liberty is life, and every
form of government yet tried proves that slavery is death. In obedience
to this law, our republic, divided and distracted by the collisions of
class and caste, is tottering to its base and can be reconstructed only
on the sure foundation of impartial freedom to all. The war in which we
are involved is not the result of party or accident, but a forward step
in the progress of the race never to be retraced. Revolution is no time
for temporizing or diplomacy. In a radical upheaving the people demand
eternal principles on which to stand.

Northern power and loyalty never can be measured until the purpose of
the war be liberty to man; for a lasting enthusiasm ever is based on a
grand idea, and unity of action demands a definite end. At this time our
greatest need is not men or money, valiant generals or brilliant
victories, but a _consistent policy_, based on the principle that "all
governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed."
The nation waits for you to say that there is no power under our
declaration of rights nor under any laws, human or divine, by which free
men can be made slaves; and therefore that your pledge to the slaves is
irrevocable, and shall be redeemed.

If it be true, as it is said, that northern women lack enthusiasm in
this war, the fault rests with those who have confused and confounded
its policy. The pages of history glow with instances of self-sacrifice
by women in the hour of their country's danger. Fear not that the
daughters of this republic will count any sacrifice too great to insure
the triumph of freedom. Let the men who wield the nation's power be
wise, brave and magnanimous, and its women will be prompt to mee