With the rise of the Republican party there came new elements into American politics. The question at stake was moral in form. It enlisted unselfish and moral and religious motives. It reached outside the proper domain of politics--the expedient measures to be adopted for ends recognized as desirable--and involved justice and right in regard to the ends. It enlisted, therefore, heroic elements: sacrifice for moral good, and devotion to right in spite of expediency. At the same time, the issue was clear, simple, single, and distinct. The organization upon it was close and harmonious, not on account of party discipline, but on account of actual concord in motive and purpose. The American system was here seen in many respects at its best, and it worked more nearly up to its theoretical results in the election of Lincoln, a thoroughly representative man out of the heart of the majority, than in any other election in our history. It is probably the recollection and the standard of this state of things which leads men now on the stage to believe that corruption is spreading and that the political system is degenerating. It is one of the peculiarities of the government of the United States, that it has little historical continuity. If it had more, or if people had more knowledge of their own political history, the above-mentioned opinion would find little ground. The student of history who goes back searching for the golden age does not find it. All the heroic elements in the political issue of 1860 were, of course, intensified by the war. There was the consciousness of patriotic sacrifice in submitting to loss, bloodshed, and taxation for the sake of an idea, for the further extension of political blessings long enjoyed and highly esteemed. After the war, national pride and consciousness of power expanded naturally, but the questions which then arose were of a different order. They were properly political questions. They concerned taxation, finance, the reconstruction of the South, the status of the freedmen. The war fervor, or the moral fervor of the political contest, could not remain at the former high pitch. There followed a natural reaction. Questions which touched the results of the war brought a quick and eager response. It would not be in human nature that that response should not be tinged by hatred of rebels and by the worse passions which war arouses. For war is at best but a barbarous makeshift for deciding political questions. Let them be never so high and pure in their moral aspects, war drags them down into contact with the lowest and basest passions--with cruelty, rapacity, and revenge. Moreover, it was natural that people should want rest and quiet after the anxiety and excitement of war. Every householder desired to enjoy in peace the political system which he had defended and established by war; he did not care to renew the excitement on the political arena. The questions which arose were no