_Then_, think of the career that lies ahead of this regenerated nation. This war, fearful and costly as it is, was needed, to rouse men and women to the conviction that there is something more in a people's life than can be counted in dollars and cents; and that their strength consists not alone in commercial superiority or material development, but, principally, in virtue, justice, righteousness. It was needed, to give the lie to that impious and infidel assumption of the South that _Cotton is king_, and to prove that the God of this heaven-protected land is a true and jealous God, who will not give his glory to Baal. It was needed, to arrest the nation in the fearful mechanical tendency it was assuming, whereby it was near denying the most holy and vital principles of its being; and it was needed, to warm and quicken the almost dead patriotism of the masses, and to educate them anew in the high and pure sentiments they had suffered to be forgotten, and, in forgetting which, many another ration has gone to irretrievable decay and ruin. I trust in God that this people have not suffered many things in vain, and that the time is dawning when we shall be a _nation_ indeed, a Christian nation, built upon those eternal ideas of truth, justice, right, charity, holiness, which would make us the ideal nation of the earth, dwelling securely under the very smile and benediction of Jehovah. In this time of which I speak, the people will see that to be a _nation_ we must not be merely servile imitators of Old World ideas, but must develop our own _American ideas_ in every department of government and society; thus, eventually, building up a national structure which shall, which need, yield to none, but may take precedence of all.