is this for the nation that is to be! Let us consider well our
advantages, be true to the inspiration that is in us, put aside at once
and forever the thought of failure, and advance with firm and confident
steps to the accomplishment of the grandest mission ever yet intrusted
to any people.

True, great humiliations may be still in store for us; for what do we
not deserve? When we consider the inhumanity, the cowardice, the stolid
selfishness, of which this people has been guilty, especially on the
subject of negro slavery, we can find no refuge from despair but in the
comforting assurance that God is a God of mercy, as well as of justice.

Let us hasten to atone for our sins, and forward the work of national
purification, by doing our duty--our whole duty--now. One thing is
certain: we cannot look for help to other nations, nor to the amiable
disposition of a foe whose pith and pluck are consanguineous with our
own, nor to the agency of individuals. It was written in the beginning
that the people which aspired to make its own laws should also work out
its own salvation. For this reason great leaders have not been given us,
and we shall not need them. It is for a nation unstable in its purposes,
and incapable of self-moderation, that the steady hand of a strong ruler
is necessary. The first Napoleon was no more a natural product of the
first French Revolution than the present Emperor is of the last. They
might each have sat for the picture of the tyrant springing to the neck
of an unbridled Democracy, drawn by Plato in the eighth book of the
"Republic": just as his description of the excesses which necessitate
despotic rule might pass for a description of the frenzy of
'Ninety-Three:--"When a State thirsts after liberty, _and happens to
have bad cup-bearers appointed it, and gets immoderately drunk with an
unmixed draught, thereof_, it punishes even the governors." No such
inebriety has resulted from the moderate draughts of that nectar in
which this new Western race has indulged; and only the southern and
more passionate portion of it is in any danger of converting its acute
"State-Rights" distemper into chronic despotism. The nation in its
childhood needed a paternal Washington; but now it has arrived at
manhood, and it requires, not a great leader, but a magistrate willing
himself to be led. Such a man is Mr. Lincoln: an able, faithful,
hard-working citizen, overseeing the affairs of all the citizens,
accepting th