In looking back on what has been said, I find I have not spoken against anybody, not even against our enemies. Perhaps we have had enough of invective; at any rate the pulpit may spare it. God is my witness, I feel no vindictive resentment, no bitter hostility against those who have been swept away by this terrible delusion. Moreover, I confess to being greatly moved by the circumstance that in some respects what is true of us is true also of them. They seem to be of one mind; their religious men appeal with confidence to the righteous Judge; their women are working day and night to help forward the cause. If it were a mere question of interest, or passion, or prejudice between us and them, it might be said that one side is as likely to be self-deceived as the other. But it is not. By striking at the principles of all constitutional and free government, and this too avowedly for the purpose of founding society on the servitude of an inferior race, on whose toil the more favored races are to live, they have put themselves in opposition to the settled convictions and the moral sense of good men all over the world. To the student of history it is no new thing that a whole community should be given over "to believe a lie,"--not the less mad, because all mad together. The process by which this state of things is brought about is always substantially the same. Egotism, vanity, disappointed ambition, sectional jealousies, a real or supposed interest or expediency induce them to _wish_ that a wrong course were the right one. They try to convince themselves that it is so, and all such efforts to sophisticate the conscience, if persisted in, are _punished by entire success_. The spectacle does not inspire me with hate; it fills me with wonder and profound melancholy. Do these men think that by altering their opinion of right they can alter the nature of things, or make wrong come out right in the great and solemn issues which are before us? We stand where their own great men stood in the best days of the republic. As regards the leading rights and interests at stake, our consciences are but the echo of the conscience of the Christian world. The fathers of the Revolution, one and all, are looking down with sorrow and indignation on this attempt to break up and destroy their work.