llows the sinner, the war
will have to be fought over again, more savage, more bloody, and more
desolating than ever, by our posterity, if not even in our own time.
Fought over again, not once, but again and again, as often as the
revolving wheel of human progress and enlightenment shall bring to the
surface the black waters of the steaming cesspool below.

But what of the result? Watchman! what of the night? The night is stormy
and dark; men's hearts are failing them for fear; those who see clearly
in the day time, now grope helplessly in the dark; the blind are leading
the blind; society is at a stand still, waiting and watching for the
coming day. Yet afar off in the east the patriot's eye may even now see
the first faint streaks of that light which shall usher in the golden
dawn.

The result, in the event of the success of the North, is too palpable to
require a moment's thought, involving, as it does, every possible
blessing to our race, every advantage to the progress of the new
theories of social equality, and of man's capacity for self-government.
But what in the other event? The evils would be legion--countless in
number and direful in effect, not to us alone, but to the whole American
race. First and foremost is that hydra _precedent_. We are fighting, not
alone for the stability of any particular form of government, not alone
for the sustaining of an administration, not alone for the upholding of
those God-given ideas which have made America the most favored land on
earth; but against a PRECEDENT, which involves and would destroy them
all. Precedent which is, and ever has been, all powerful to overturn
theories and systems, to topple kings from their thrones, and plunge
nations into slavery. Of all dangers which every liberal form of
government has to shun, none is so deadly as this. Grave and venerable
judges, sages though they may be, rest upon it, and thereon base
decisions involving millions of property, and sometimes life itself. And
though, as Blackstone has declared, a bad precedent in law is
comparatively harmless, inasmuch as succeeding judges are in no wise
bound by it, but free, and in fact bound to decide the law as it was
before the evil precedent was established, and to interpret it as it
ought to be, yet in national affairs this is not so. No matter how bad
or absurd a precedent may be, designing men will be found in all ages
and climes to avail themselves of it, honestly or dishonestly. Men's