heretofore, have been the
cherished hopes which have hung around them like a firmament, and they
are not yet prepared to believe that their political universe has been,
or ever can be, annihilated.

Nor is this confidence a mere sentiment, born of the imagination, and
nurtured by vainglorious hope. It has for its support far more
substantial grounds than any merely precarious military successes, or
any of the favorable incidents which, from time to time, may be cast
ashore as waifs by the surging tide of civil war. Let the temporary
fortunes of the war be what they will, yet the general bearing of the
old Government, its evident consciousness of strength, its unshaken
solidity in the midst of the storm which assails it, the confidence
that, even with all its errors and blunders, it is still powerful enough
to prevail--all these appeal irresistibly to the hearts and judgments of
Americans, and make them love and confide in their country, and believe
in her destiny, in spite of her misfortunes. The tenacity and stubborn
purpose of the rebels are, indeed, remarkable. Their position gives them
great advantages for such a conflict; and it must be admitted that they
have shown the eminently bad genius to make the most of their fatal
opportunities. Yet is the contest most unequal, and the ultimate result
of discomfiture to them inevitable. The Federal Government, like a
sluggish but powerful man scarcely yet aroused to the exertion of his
full strength, moves slowly and awkwardly, and lays about him with
careless and inefficient blows; while his active adversary, inferior in
strength and in the moral power of his cause, but more fully aroused and
more energetic, strikes with better effect, and makes every blow tell.
Nevertheless, the strength of the one remains unexhausted, and even
increases as he becomes awakened to the demands of the struggle; while
that of the other slowly and gradually, but inevitably and irretrievably
declines, with every hour of intense strain of faculty which the
dreadful work imposes. Partial observers, imbued with sympathy in bad
designs, and blinded by false hopes through that fatal error, may still
think the South is certain to prevail and to establish the empire of
slavery; but cooler heads, with vision made clear by love of humanity,
cannot fail to see a different result as the necessary end of the
contest. The South herself, under the shadow of a dread responsibility,
begins to understand the na