“‘The war-drums throb no longer, and the battle-flags are furled’— and I look forward with joy and hope to the day when our brave people, one in heart, one in their aspirations for freedom and peace, shall see that the darkness through which we have traveled was a part of that stern but beneficent discipline by which the Great Disposer of events has been leading us on to a higher and nobler national life. “But such a result can be reached only by comprehending the whole meaning of the revolution through which we have passed and are still passing. I say still passing; for I remember that after the battle of arms comes the battle of history. The cause that triumphs in the field does not always triumph in history. And those who carried the war for union and equal and universal freedom to a victorious issue can never safely relax their vigilance until the ideas for which they fought have become embodied in the enduring forms of individual and national life. “Has this been done? Not yet. “I ask the gentleman in all plainness of speech, and yet in all kindness, is he correct in his statement that the conquered party accept the results of the war? Even if they do, I remind the gentleman that _accept_ is not a very strong word. I go further. I ask him if the Democratic party have _adopted_ the results of the war? Is it not asking too much of human nature to expect such unparalleled changes to be not only accepted, but, in so short a time, adopted by men of strong and independent opinions? “The antagonisms which gave rise to the war and grew out of it were not born in a day, nor can they vanish in a night. “Mr. Chairman, great ideas travel slowly, and for a time noiselessly, as the gods, whose feet were shod with wool. Our war of independence was a war of ideas, of ideas evolved out of two hundred years of slow and silent growth. When, one hundred years ago, our fathers announced as self-evident truths the declaration that all men are created equal, and the only just power of governments is derived from the consent of the governed, they uttered a doctrine that no nation had ever adopted, that not one kingdom on the earth then believed. Yet to our fathers it was so plain that they would not debate it. They announced it as a truth ‘self-evident.’