ectacle of the
grief of a _nation_--that aggregation of strong men and of vital
interests. When the very sky seems dimmed and the bright sunshine a
mockery. When the foot falls without energy and the voice breaks forth
without emphasis. When men, who meet on the corners of streets, clasp
hands in silence or only speak in low and broken words. When the silver
moonlight seems to be shining upon nothing else than new-made graves.
When the sound of revelry from ball-rooms jars upon the heart until it
creates deadly sickness; and the glare of lights from places of public
amusement seems to be an indecorum like a waltz at a funeral. When a
uniform in the street is a reproach and a horror; and the music of the
band to which soldiers tramp, sounds like nothing but the "Dead March in
Saul." When business is impossible, and idleness an agony. When the old
flag is looked up to without pride, and the very pulses of patriotism
seem dead because they have no hope to keep them in motion. When all is
darkness--all discouragement--all shame--all despair. These are the
tears of a broad land--this is the spectacle we witness when a nation
weeps. The loyal men of this generation have wept more bitterly and
sorely, within the past two years, than those wept who saw the armies of
the Revolution starved and outnumbered--who pined in the Prison-Ships
and tracked the bloody snow at Valley Forge. God forgive those who have
wrung these tears--whatever the ultraism they may represent! The people
they have outraged will not forgive until a terrible vengeance is taken.

The first days of July, when fell the President's fifth proclamation,
calling for "three hundred thousand more." If ever a cry of despair
burst out from an overcharged heart, it went up to heaven from the whole
land at that moment. "Have I yet more to give?" cried the depopulated
city and the desolated village. "Have I yet more to give?" cried the
father with one son remaining of his six brave boys; "Have I yet more to
give?" echoed the widow whose last stay was to be taken from her; and
"Have I yet more to give?" re-echoed the wife as she buckled the sword
or the bayonet-sheath on the side of her husband and sent him forth as
one more sacrifice to the insatiate demons of Ambition and
Mismanagement. Have not the days following Manassas, and the Seven Days
before Richmond, and Fredericksburgh, been hours in a national
Gethsemane? And has not the hand been almost excusable, lifted in th