uthern States have the
advantage.

I have very great doubts whether our opponents fight with the hope of
triumph; I mean, whether they honestly believe, that if they conquer,
their principle can be permanently established.

Their very bitterness, which exceeds all bounds of a common humanity,
the very vindictiveness with which they carry on the contest, shows me
that they believe in a victory by war, but not by peace. And here the
question presents itself to me: Why must an acknowledged ideal
principle always and forever be attained through blood?

This is the great enigma of history. But it is the same as it is in a
smaller sphere and in individual life; humanity is rational, but its
predominating characteristic is passion, impulsive affection, which
urges forward and renovates the life of humanity as it does that of the
individual. I am reminded of an expression of yours, that nothing is so
conducive to the growth of vegetation as a thunder-storm. It is perhaps
the same in the history of man and of humanity. Schiller's dream, that
the highest form of poetry would be the peaceful idyl of an equilibrium
of opposite forces without any great sacrifice, is but a dream. It is
not found in the sphere of pure thought or poesy, because it is nowhere
found in actual life.

As Goethe said, this America has no middle ages to conquer, but he was
mistaken in saying that it had no basaltic strata, for it is now just
coming out of its own peculiar condition of feudalism. Its history,
like that of a dramatic poem, is condensed into a briefer period of
time, and brought more directly under our view.

This America has been engaged in no war for dynasty or religion, and it
must now fight for an idea. Independence was the first great question,
and that may be also an egoistic question. The emancipation of others
is the second and purely ideal one; and to be taken entirely out of the
strife for wealth and material goods where external well-being is the
sole interest, the final and supreme concern, and to be placed in a
period of history where life must be imperilled for an idea, this gives
ideal power. America now for the first time brings her new element, her
sacrificial gift, into the Pantheon of humanity. Until now, it might be
said that the historical greatness of America bore no comparison with
its natural greatness.

America has had, compressed into a single epoch of existence, its
migration of the nations, its crusades, and i