_Vae victis!_ If we do not rise in our might and crush this rebellion root and branch, we shall be crushed--and no honest, observant man can deny it. Fire and water may as well mingle as we two hope to inhabit the same continent. It is hammer or anvil with us now, and no escape. They realize with delight that our year of procrastination has been to them more than two years of preparation, and so confident are they of success as to even wish to conceal their numbers. Reader, this is not an emergency whose evil results may fall on others and not on yourself. There is not one loyal American to whom Southern success does not portend misery, poverty, degradation. We have not yet felt the foot of the enemy on our soil, but if we pour away the life-blood of the nation little by little, why, a day will come when the blood will be exhausted, and the enemy, grown to fearful strength, will come ravaging over the border. Do not fold your hands in fancied security and say of that day: 'It is far off.' When it comes, you will say, as you _now_ say of the past year, that there was time lost and sad negligence. A year ago we 'progressives' cried aloud in bitter earnestness for one great, overwhelming effort, for decisive measures, and after debating, and delaying, and plucking all the feathers from our bird, they threw him, half-starved, at Bull Run, and then cried: There is your victory! A year ago we urged expediency and boldness; but 'Democracy' quibbled at every thing, hindered everything, and then laid the fault on us--as its friend Jeff Davis does when accusing the Federal Government of waging barbarous warfare--so as to excuse his own iniquities. But now we have come to the bitter need, and the country must choose between bold measures and measureless disgrace. Lo! the country is responding heart and soul. From every township comes the cry of Union or death! What was the waking of Sumter, compared to this of the summer and autumn of eighteen hundred and sixty-two? At last the truth has gone home--we _must_ conquer. Conquer or be conquered, it is, O friends! but if you _will_ it, you _shall_ have victory. You have the strength: in God's name put forth your hand and grasp the golden crown. TOM WINTERS' STORY.