There was one who builded wiser than he knew, Emerson says, and I think that result is not uncommon. The little Indian boy in the pleasant fable, who ran on eagerly in advance of his migrating tribe, to plant his single, three-cornered beech-nut in the center of a great prairie, scarcely foresaw the many acres of heavy timber which was to confront the white pioneer hundreds of years afterward, as the outgrowth of his childish deed. Many soldiers are fighting our battles upon a basis broader than they know. There are men who believe that they are solely engaged in putting down the rebellion; others are maintaining the disputed courage and honor of the "mudsills"; some are fighting to uphold our present Northern civilization and its institutions; and a handful have set out definitely to carry these into the South, to give them to the slave, and to the master also, in spite of himself. All love the Union, and are ready to fight, perhaps to die, for it. Aye! but what does that mean? Something as antagonistic in the interpretation thereof as the decisions touching an ancient oracle, a disputed biblical text, or a knotty passage from our own venerated Constitution. If victory should come just as she is summoned by each class of our patriotic and brave Union volunteers, would she most favor the rebels or the Government? Look at some of her conflicting purposed achievements: 1. To preserve slavery unharmed, without so much as the smell of fire upon its garments, when it shall emerge from the ordeal of war. 2. To gratuitously establish slavery forever, by solemn and unchanging guarantees. 3. To leave slavery to perish slowly and ingloriously, as it must when unprotected. 4. To cripple and destroy slavery by a long guerrilla warfare against its special manifestations. 5. To kill slavery at a blow, by right of an imperious and undoubted military necessity. 6. To exterminate slavery without compromise or weighing of consequences, because it is a gross moral wrong.