The history of our race is one of warfare. "Wars and fightings" have been realized among men from the beginning, and the world has not outgrown the sanguinary strife. Even during the time of which we are speaking in these pages, when so much has been done for the mental and moral enlightenment of mankind, these murderous human contentions have been going on in the Old World and the New. Our own nation has passed through one of the darkest passages of its history. The war of the Rebellion came of a war that existed previous to the withdrawal of the Southern States of our Union, the war of slavery,--for slavery itself is war always, an outrage on the rights of human beings, perpetrated by members of a common brotherhood. And thus one war opened the way to another. They who were warring upon others could no longer bear to have their wrong-doings questioned, but claimed the right to multiply and perpetuate them. So came secession, so came the fratricidal contest. The majority of the nation did not seek war, did not desire it. But the Unionists of the nation deemed themselves justified in resisting the efforts of the secessionists to dismember the nation, and so through a defensive warfare sought to preserve the Union. It was a terrible ordeal, and although the abomination of slavery was swept away, it was at the cost of tens of thousands of lives, of a vast amount of treasure, of suffering as yet unrevealed, and of a lamentable demoralization. The Almighty brought out of it a new order of things with our nation, by abolishing human bondage and placing freedom in the ascendancy. The new order, however, is not yet fully effected. It will take time, wisdom, patience, mutual forbearance, sympathy, and fraternal help to secure this result. But one reform aids another. A higher view of the claims of human freedom will tend to effect a clearer perception of the great claims of the human brotherhood. If man is too good to be enslaved by his fellow-man, he is too good to be destroyed by him. If human freedom is sacred, so is human life. And we are sure that this grand conception has been very clearly realized, and as clearly affirmed, during the middle of the present century.