e guidance of Providence, and conscientiously yielding
himself to be the medium of a people's will, the agent of its destinies.
That is all we have any right to expect of him; and if we expect more,
we shall be disappointed. He cannot stretch forth his hand and save us,
although we have now twice elected him to his high place. Upon
ourselves, and upon ourselves alone, under God, success and victory
still depend.

What outward duties are to be fulfilled it is needless to recapitulate
here,--for have they not been taught in every loyal pulpit and in every
loyal print, in sermon, story, and song, until there is not a school-boy
but knows the lesson? Treason must be defeated in the field, its armies
annihilated, its power destroyed forever. In order to accomplish this,
our own armies must be kept constantly recruited with numbers and with
confidence. As for American slavery, it perishes from the face of the
earth utterly. We have had enough of the serpent which the young
Republic warmed in its too kind bosom. Now it dies; there is no help for
it: if you object to the heel upon its head, and place your own head
there to sheild it, God pity you, my friend, for you will have need of
more than human pity! This war is to be brought to a triumphant close,
and the cause of the war extirpated, whether you like it or not. You can
accept destruction and ignominy with it, or you may live to rejoice over
the most glorious victory and reform of the age: take your choice: but
understand, once for all, that complaint is puerile, and expostulation
but an idle wind in the face of inexorable Fate. Shall we remember our
martyred heroes, our noble, our beloved, who have gone down in this
conflict, and sit gloomily content while the devouring monster survives?
Is it nothing that they have fallen, and yet such a wrong that the
fetters of the bondman should fall? Is the claim of property in man so
sacred, and the blood of our brothers so cheap? Have done with this
heartless cant,--this prating about the constitutional rights of
traitors! When the Moslem chief was marching to the chastisement of a
revolted tribe, the insurgents, seeing disaster inevitable in a fair
field, resorted to the device of elevating the Koran upon the shafts of
their spears, and bearing it before them into battle. The stratagem
succeeded. The fanatical Arabs were filled with horror on finding that
they had lifted their swords against the Book of the Holy Prophet, and
fled