“Let our readers glance back to that period; let them take a view of a tall, pale man seated in the chair of state; let them look into his eyes, his soul, and see and even hear the beating pulse of the nation’s heart in his every fibre; let them look out and over the land and hear the maniacs of treason crying for his blood; let them look North, and even there hear the rebel sympathizers breathing curses loud and deep; let them read the first call for 75,000 troops, written with a nervous hand and a quailing heart; then look! behold! a nation obeys the call of the President, and the voice of the Union-loving people cheers and upholds him in his seat. The rebels find _no open aid North_. Covert, treacherous scoundrels, descendants of traitors, thieves, and murderers, met, it is true, in secret councils, but soon fell into their earthly hell before the indignant glance of an aroused people. “Where now is slavery? Who struck at its very root and sent it shivering into pieces throughout the land? The very men who perfected and planned this revolution. “Serpent-like, they bit themselves, and are now dying of the poison. Throughout the whole of these trying scenes—from the firing on Fort Sumter to the present—Abraham Lincoln has stood up firmly and consistently for the nation. Party questions have been repudiated and all sectional distinctions laid aside; for he had but one object, _that of saving the Union_! If to do this the destruction of the institution of slavery was necessary, its being powerless, helpless, and dead cannot be laid to his charge: it fell a victim to the acts of men who attempted to place it above the Constitution, and in the doing of which they have _crushed it and themselves out of the Union_. Thank God for this, the only good they have done!”[42] Mr. Lincoln’s Cabinet was composed of men who set themselves to work in earnest. What they have done is now our country’s glory, our nation’s triumph. Mr. Blair, in his first report, speaking of the commencement of his term of office, says,—