Let the reader carefully digest this statement, and regard it not as an abstraction of political economy, but as setting forth a vital truth intimately allied to our closest interests, and to a future involving the most serious emergencies. We are at a crisis which demands a new influx of political thought and new principles. Our Revolution, with its Constitution, was such an epoch; so too was the old strife between Federalism and Democracy, in which both sides contended for what were their rights. Since those days we have gone further, and the present struggle, precipitated by the madness and folly of the South, sees those who understand the great and glorious question of free labor with its affinities to capital, endeavoring to prepare the way for a grand coming North American Union, in which poor and rich hand in hand shall press on, extending civilization, and crushing to the ground all obsolete demagogueism, corruption, and folly. It is time that the word 'radical' were expunged from our political dictionary. Under the old system of warfare men were regarded as being divided into the 'poor,' who were 'out' of capital, and the rich, who were 'in.' The progress of good, honest, unflinching _labor_ is causing men to look higher than these old limitations. We want no 'outs' or 'ins'--in this country every man should be 'in,' given heart and soul to honest industry. And no man or woman who can _work_ is without capital, for every such person is a capital in self. When politics are devoted, as they must be, to extending education and protecting industry, we shall hear no more of these absurd quarrels between the 'conservative' and 'radical' elements. When the government shall have triumphed in this great struggle,--when the South, with its obsolete theories of the supremacy of capital over labor, shall have yielded to the great advancing truth of the age,--when free labor, rendered freer and nobler than ever, shall rule all powerful from ocean to ocean, then we shall see this great American republic restored to its original strength and beauty, progressing in the path laid down by our Revolutionary forefathers, and stripped of the cruel impediments which have clogged its course for years, proving to the world the great assertion of all time, that man is capable of self-government. It is this which lies before us,--neither a gloomy 'conservative' prospect of old-fashioned unchangeability, and still less the gorgeous but preposterous dreams of Fourierite or other socialist; but simply the healthy future of a hard-working country, in which every impediment shall be removed from free labor and its every right respected. And to bring this to pass there is but one first step required. Push on the war, support the Administration, triumph at any risk or cost, and then make of this America one great free land. Freedom! _In hoc signo vinces_. * * * * * THE BLACK FLAG.