the moral tone of our communities, if we did not meet these calumnies with fitting rebuke, and if we did not our utmost to prevent a shade of doubt or suspicion as to the righteous nature of this war from polluting our northern air, and from invading those northern homes made desolate by the news of battle and of loved ones dying amid its terrors. This is no time for half-way measures or half-way men. This is no time for the deepest convictions of the heart to falter upon the lips, from motives of mere worldly prudence. Things _must_ be called by their right names. Deeds _must_ be approved or emphatically condemned. Men must _be_ what they _seem_. _For_ or _against_ the Government they must take their stand. Justice, and judgment, and mercy, demand that there be no trifling, no concealment, no equivocation now. Wars have been, may be again, about which we can differ, _but this is not one of them_. The President of the United States is exerting all his powers, as it is his duty to do, to save the government from destruction. Greater responsibility never rested upon a ruler, and he has done his duty eminently well. He has a right to the sympathy and active aid of every citizen. In some respects he may have overstepped his constitutional powers. Men, if true and loyal, may differ from him as to his policy and prerogatives, and their opinions be entitled to respect, but they should praise vastly more than blame. But men, who condemn _him_ yet condemn not _the rebellion_ he is trying to crush are not entitled to respect. The President, his advisers and agents may err; they are but human, but their _object_ is to save the Constitution and Union; the object of the South is the destruction of both, and wherever and whenever you find men who denounce the former fiercely and the latter faintly, whose eyes are so microscopic that they can discover, in the records of Congress and the departments, flaws in legislation and frauds in contracts, and yet cannot see the tremendous fraud and crime of this rebellion; whenever you find men who cry peace, peace, and who mean by peace, and can’t mean otherwise, the independence of the South, the submission of the North, the dissolution of the Union and the death of republican liberty, then you have found the deadliest foes your country has in these dark and trying hours.