it be premised that we
proceed entirely upon the hypothesis--which to every truly loyal mind is
already an established truth--of the ultimate success and complete
triumph of the North in the present contest. For in any other event all
these facts are dumb, and the inferences to be drawn from them vague and
unsatisfactory, absolutely no better than mere random conjecture. And as
the war has now become the great fact in our history, and its effects
must modify our whole social life for many years to come, its results
must not be neglected in an investigation of this kind, but, on the
contrary, claim our first attention.

First and foremost, then, among the lasting results of the war, will be
the _arousing of our nationality_. To the majority of readers it will
seem the climax of heresy to assert that hitherto we have not known a
pure and lofty nationality. What! you will ask, did not our ancestors,
by their sufferings and strivings in that war which first made our land
famous throughout the civilized world, bestow upon us a separate, true,
and noble national existence? Have we not twice humbled the pride of the
most powerful nation upon earth? Have we not covered the seas with our
commerce, and brought all nations to pay tribute to our great staples?
Have we not taken the lead in all adventurous and eminently practical
enterprises, and is not our land the home of invention and the foster
mother of the useful arts? Has not the whole world gazed with admiring
wonder at our miraculous advancement in the scale of national existence?
In a word, have we not long since become a great, established fact, as
well in physical history as in the sublime record of that intellectual
progress whereby humanity draws constantly nearer to the divine? And as
for patriotic feeling, do we not yearly burn tons of powder on the
all-glorious Fourth of July, and crack our throats with huzzas for the
'star-spangled banner' and the American eagle? And a caviller might
perhaps go farther, and ask the significant question, Are we not known
all over the world as a race of arrant braggarts?

Grant all these things, and we are yet as far from that true, firm,
self-relying, high-toned nationality which alone is worthy of the name,
as when the Pilgrims landed upon Plymouth rock. Our patriotism has
hitherto been too utterly heartless--too much a thing of sounding words
and meaningless phrases--too much of the 'sounding brass and tinkling
cymbal.' We have