Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863: Devoted to Literature and National PolicyVarious
General
Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863: Devoted to Literature and National Policy
Various
Literature, Modern -- 19th century -- Periodicals; United States -- Politics and government -- 19th century -- Periodicals
Fling personal ambition and individual aggrandizement to the winds. Let
political preferment and partisan proclivities bide their time, and as a
united and one-minded people, devote heart and mind, strength and money,
to the prosecution of the campaign, without considering what may be its
duration, and without fear of circumstance or expenditure. If it be
necessary, let the public debt be increased until it reaches and exceeds
the public liabilities of the most indebted Government of Europe. We and
our descendants will cheerfully pay the interest on that expenditure
which purchased so great a blessing as national endurability. Meanwhile,
with unity, forbearance, perseverance, and the silent administration of
the ballot box, we will, as a people, maintain, notwithstanding that a
portion of the land we hold dear stands severed from us by hatred and
prejudice, the prosperity which we still claim, and the renown which was
once accorded to us. By so doing, and by so doing only, shall our former
grandeur come back to us--though its garments be stained with blood. A
grandeur which, without hyperbole, it may be said, will outstrip the
glory which, as a young and sanguine people, we have ever claimed for
our country. The reason for so believing is the simple and undeniable
fact that out of the saddening humiliation and devastation of this civil
war has arisen the better knowledge of the wonderful resources,
abilities, and determined spirit of the American people. We see--both
combatants--that we are giants fighting, and not quarrelling pigmies, as
the foreign enemies of us both have vainly attempted to prove. We see,
both combatants, how vast and important to each is the territory we are
struggling for, how inseparable to our united interests are the sources
of wealth imbedded in our rocks, underlying our soil, and growing in its
beneficent bosom. We see, both combatants, how strong is the commerce of
the East to supply, like a diligent handmaiden, the wants of every
section; how bountiful are the plantations of the South and the
granaries of the West to keep the world united to us in the strong bonds
of commercial and friendly intercourse; how absolutely necessary to the
prosperity of both are the deep and wide-flowing rivers which run, like
silver bands of peace, through the length and breadth of a land whose
vast privileges we have been too blind to appreciate, and in that
blindness would destroy. Above all, we are _beginning_ to see that like
two mighty champions fighting for the belt of superiority, we can
neither of us achieve that individual advantage which can utterly and
forever place the other beyond the ability of again accepting the
gauntlet of defiance, and that our true and lasting glory can alone
proceed from a determination to shake hands in peace, and, as united
champions, defying no longer each other, defy the world. Nor would the
South in consenting to a reunion _now_ find humiliation or dishonor. She
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