This rebellion is indeed the most stupendous in history. It absorbs the attention and affects the political institutions and material interests of the world. The armies engaged exceed those of Napoleon. Death never had such a carnival, and each week consumes millions of treasure. Great is the sacrifice, but the cause is peerless and sublime. (_Cheers._) If God has placed us in the van of the great contest for the rights and liberties of man, if he has assigned us the post of danger and of suffering, it is that of unfading glory and imperishable renown. (_Loud cheers._) The question with us, which is so misunderstood here, is that of national unity (_hear, hear_), which is the vital element of our existence; and any settlement which does not secure this with the entire integrity of the Union, and freedom throughout all its borders, will be treason to our country and to mankind. (_Loud cheers._) To acknowledge the absurd and anarchical doctrine of secession, as is demanded of us here, to abdicate the power of self-preservation, and permit the Union to be dissolved, is ruin, disgrace, and suicide. There is but one alternative--we must and will fight it out to the last. (_Loud and prolonged applause._) If need be, all who can bear arms must take the field, and leave to those who cannot the pursuits of industry. (_Hear, hear._) If we count not the cost of this contest in men and money, it is because all loyal Americans believe that the value of our Union cannot be estimated. (_Hear, hear._) If martyrs from every State, from England, and from nearly every nation of Christendom have fallen in our defence, never, in humble faith we trust, has any blood, since that of Calvary, been shed in a cause so holy. (_Cheers._) Most of the rebellions which have disturbed or overthrown governments, ave been caused by oppression on their part. Such rebellions have been the rising of the oppressed against the oppressor; but this rebellion was caused exclusively by slavery. (_Cheers._) To extend, and perpetuate, and nationalize slavery, to demand of the American Congress the direct and explicit recognition of the right of property in man, to cover the whole vast territory of the Union with chattel servitude, to keep open the interstate slave-trade between the Border and the Cotton States, to give the institution absolute mastery over the Government and people, to carry it into every new State by fraud, and violence, and forgery, as was exemplified in Kansas, and then, as a final result, to force it upon every Free State of the Union--these were the objects conceived by those who are engaged in this foul conspiracy to dissolve the American Union. (_Cheers._) 'I have said that the American Union never will be dissolved.' (_Loud and continued cheers._) This was the advice of the peerless Washington, the Father of his country, in his Farewell Address, and this was the course of the immortal Andrew Jackson, when he