But there is a better class of advisers who counsel the North to compromise and conciliation, with the hope of weathering the present gale, and ultimately keeping the ship on the track of a Christian democracy. They sincerely believe the American Union is the best hope of freedom on this continent; that united, these States must finally reach the promised land; dissevered, they will drift into hopeless anarchy. We appreciate the motives and understand the apprehensions of this large body of the Northern people. We wish they took less counsel of their fears, and saw more clearly the danger of experimenting on a thing so sensitive as human rights. We think they are too much concerned to learn what will appease our despotism, forgetting that it is unappeasable; while they also forget that there is a sentiment of freedom that will not submit beyond a fixed point, and that point of endurance is already near. We know that successful statesmanship must be a series of approaches to abstract right, and no great idea of liberty can be organized at once. We do not presume to explain the details of our public policy in a region where the political landscape changes every morning; and it is absurd to ask our advanced statesmen to sacrifice the permanent interest of liberty to a verbal consistency. No party can always be guided by its own platform; especially can no great national policy be run upon the straight track of a fore-ordained programme. Therefore, _we believe in all methods of conciliation and forbearance that do not vitiate the spirit of liberty in the people or imperil the final triumph of freedom in the country_. Let us keep the conscience of the North sound, its spirit high, its determination unchangeable for a true civilization. We must abate none of our great agencies of freedom. The free school, the free press, free speech, free society, a free ballot, a free church must be sustained at all hazards, and purified of grossness and license by the gradual education and refining of the people. Our political state policy must be maintained, and only changed in the direction of purging the cause of freedom from all base alloy, and opening into wider vistas of Christian liberty. Then we must choose men for our servants in national offices whose fidelity to God and man are undoubted; instruct them to see that the cause of humanity receives no harm, and trust much to their wisdom in the details of public policy. It is daily becoming a more difficult task to guide our national affairs. Only the highest order of ability, experience and unflinching principle can suffice for the mighty toil. The Northern people will sacrifice every man, however lofty, who turns his back against the present age. They will resent any measure whose effect is to undermine Northern ideas, however imperceptibly. But they will give a generous margin for that policy of wise conciliation, which will preserve the Union to freedom forever.