ch is to be feared, for liberty, science, and
civilization from European Liberalism, which has no real affinity with
American territorial democracy and real civil and religious freedom.
But God and reality are present in the Old World as, well as in the
New, and it will never do to restrict their power or freedom.

Whether the American people will prove faithful to their mission, and
realize their destiny, or not, is known only to Him from whom nothing
is hidden. Providence is free, and leaves always a space for human
free-will. The American people can fail, and will fail if they neglect
the appointed means and conditions of success; but there is nothing in
their present state or in their past history to render their failure
probable. They have in their internal constitution what Rome wanted,
and they are in no danger of being crushed by exterior barbarism.
Their success as feeble colonies of Great Britain in achieving their
national independence, and especially in maintaining, unaided, and
against the real hostility of Great Britain and France, their national
unity and integrity against a rebellion which, probably, no other
people could have survived, gives reasonable assurance for their
future. The leaders of the rebellion, than whom none better knew or
more nicely calculated the strength and resources of the Union, counted
with certainty on success, and the ablest, the most experienced, and
best informed statesmen of the Old World felt sure that the Republic
was gone, and spoke of it as the late United States. Not a few, even
in the loyal States, who had no sympathy with the rebellion, believed
it idle to think of suppressing it by force, and advised peace on the
best terms that could be obtained. But Ilium fuit was chanted too
soon; the American people were equal to the emergency, and falsified
the calculations and predictions of their enemies, and surpassed the
expectations of their friends.

The attitude of the real American people during the fearful struggle
affords additional confidence in their destiny. With larger armies on
foot than Napoleon ever commanded, with their line of battle stretching
from ocean to ocean, across the whole breadth of the continent, they
never, during four long years of alternate victories and defeats--and
both unprecedentedly bloody--for a moment lost their equanimity, or
appeared less calm, collected, tranquil, than in the ordinary times of
peace. They not for a moment interr