We shall succeed in crushing this Rebellion. True, tidings of disaster float upon the air. God pity the dying soldier, and the desolate homes throughout the land. If we have lost a great battle the war is just begun. We may lose one battle, we may lose fifty, but we will gain more than we lose, and _will_ conquer in the end. We have two men to their one; we have ten times their wealth; we hold the sea, we have infinite resources in reserve upon land; we have a cause that will keep us ever hopeful and defiant, and in the end we _must_ conquer. But we have lessons of wisdom yet to learn, and we must learn some from our enemies. Every dollar of property among them, owned by us, they confiscate and use against us in war. Every dollar of debt owed by their citizens to ours they claim as the property of their government. They tolerate no enemies among them. Men who do not heartily support them they drive out of their country, or into the ranks of their armies. We have not _dared_ to attack them with their own weapons. _They never can be conquered till we do_; and it may be true that we can only learn wisdom in the severe school of defeat and disaster. But learn it we must and will, and we will teach them, and teach the world, at whatever sacrifice of means and life, that republican liberty in America was not born to die. We know, and we must teach them, that our life-long enthusiasm for popular government, our life-long hope for its spread throughout the world, that all the memories that cluster around this sacred day, hallowing our past and brightening our future, are all involved in, are impossible without, the perpetuity of this Union. We know that our lives are worth nothing, that all our aims and achievements are valueless, that we can claim no high standard for conduct or character, that we can find no link to bind us to the immortal men who signed _that_ Declaration,{1} if we are to leave behind us, as a heritage for our children, a Union “divided, discordant, belligerent,” instead of “Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable.” {1} The Declaration of Independence which had just been read by JOHN RODGERS, ESQ. Transcriber’s Notes: ――Text in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_). ――Punctuation and spelling inaccuracies were silently corrected. ――Archaic and variable spelling has been preserved. End of Project Gutenberg's Our Union and its Defenders, by J. Howard Pugh