I am aware that, in enlarging upon these points, I have told you nothing new. I have, perhaps, told you little from which you would dissent. Times like these make all men thinkers, and on all cardinal points all patriots think alike. We are crowding years into days. Instinctively we recognize our duties. We learn not now our lessons of highest wisdom from one another. _Events_, God’s teachers and inspirers, are bringing to the surface all our nobler qualities. The objects we had set before us as being worthy the struggle of a life, have all sunk to a lower level, and higher objects have arisen, demanding self-abandonment, self-sacrifice, and absorbing the whole soul in love of country, in care for its honour, in sorrow for its misfortunes, in joy for its triumphs, in devotion to its service even unto death. The prosecution of this war is not with us a matter of choice; we do not regard it as a matter about which we have any right to hesitate or consult our own wishes or interests; it comes to us in the sphere of our highest duties; it prompts us to ask, not so much what we owe ourselves, as what we owe posterity; and we know we shall deserve the just condemnation of history, and the eternal execration of our children, if we do not sacrifice every selfish aim, every social comfort, every domestic tie, every interest of property or life, rather than have this Union divided. Beside this question of union, the question of slavery, deemed so important by many, sinks out of sight. Not but that the latter has important bearings on the war, both in the relation of _cause_ and _cure_, but the great issue before us is not one of the good or ill of four millions of blacks, but of thirty millions of whites. The majestic duty of the hour is to save this Union, for ourselves, for our children and the children of those who would destroy it, for the unborn millions of the North and South, the East and the West. Let us, then, honour the dead who die in this cause, and the living mothers who bore them; let us honour the heroes who survive the conflict; let their children be taught to prize the names they inherit, and let it be the joy of the living and the solace of those who mourn the dead, that the men whose names are enrolled on the side of the Government, in the battles of ’61 and ’62, will live forever in the hearts of their countrymen, side by side with the soldiers of our great Washington. And, moreover, if this war be as righteous as we believe it, it becomes us to counteract, by word and deed, those influences, so widespread, so noxious, and withal so active in diffusing a contrary belief. For there are some men in all sections of the North, some even in the halls of Congress, some men and some women in every community, who stigmatise this war on our behalf as wicked and inhuman; and it would be a shame upon our civilization, a reproach upon our courage, our intelligence and our patriotism, and