The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 | Page 2

free and advanced of any that the world has ever witnessed.
In the presence of this great fact, one is led to exclaim: 'How strange!'
How monstrous an anomaly! What singular fatality has brought two
such irreconcilable opposites together? It is as if two individuals,
deadly foes, should by a mysterious chance, encounter each other
unexpectedly on some wide, dreary waste of the Arctic solitudes.
Whither no other souls of the earth's teeming millions come, thither
these two alone, of all the world beside, are, as if helplessly impelled,
to settle their quarrel by the death of one or the other. Thus singular and
inexplicable does it at first sight seem--this juxtaposition of freedom
and slavery on the shores of the new world.
On second thoughts, however, we shall find this apparent singularity
and mystery to disappear. We are surprised only because we see a
familiar fact under a new aspect, and do not at once recognize it. What
we see before us in this great event is only an underlying fact of every
individual's personal experience, expanded into the gigantic
proportions of a nation's experience. In every child of Adam are the
seeds of good and of evil. Side by side they lie together in the same soil;
they are nourished and developed together; they become more and
more marked and individualized with advancing years, swaying the
child and the youth, hither and thither, according as one or the other
prevails; until at some period in the full rationality of riper age comes
the deadly contest between the power of darkness and the power of
light--one or the other conquers; the man's character is fixed; and he
travels along the path he has chosen, upward or downward.
So it is now with the great collective individual, the American republic.
So it is and has been with every other nation. The powers of good and
evil contend no less in communities and nations than in the individuals
who compose them; and, according as one or the other influence

prevails in rulers or in ruled, have human civilization and human
welfare been advanced or retarded.
In the American Union, the contrast has been more marked, more vivid,
and of greater extent than the world has ever seen, because of the
higher, freer, more humane character of our institutions, and the extent
of region which they cover. The brighter the sunshine, the darker the
shadow; the higher the good to be enjoyed, the darker, more deplorable
is the evil which is the inverse and opposite of that good. Hence, with a
knowledge of this prevalent fact of fallen human nature, and also of the
fact that nations are but individuals repeated--one might almost have
foreseen that if institutions, more free and enlightened than had ever
before blessed a people, were to arise upon any region of the
globe--something proportionately hideous and repulsive in the other
direction would be seen to start up alongside of them, and seek their
destruction.
Is this so strange then? It is only in agreement with the great truth, that
the best men endure the strongest temptations. He who was sinless
endured and overcame what no mere mortal could have borne for an
instant. So the highest truths have ever encountered the most violent
opposition. The most salutary reforms have had to struggle the hardest
to obtain a footing; in a word, the higher and holier the heaven from
whence blessings descend to earth, the deeper and more malignant is
the hell that rises in opposition. With the truly-sought aid of Him,
however, who alone has all power in heaven, earth, and hell, victory is
certain to be achieved in national no less than in individual trials.
But in both national and individual difficulties it is indispensable, in
order that courage may not waver, that hope may not falter--it is
indispensable that there should be, as already urged, a clear intellectual
comprehension of the full nature of the good thing for which battle is
waged. The brilliant vision of attainable good must be preserved
undimmed--ever present in sharp and radiant outline to the mental eye;
and so its lustre may also fall in a flood of searching light on the evil
which is battled against, clearly revealing all its hideousness.
A clear understanding by the people at large, of what that is in which

the value of the Union consists, is only next in importance to the Union
itself; since the preservation of the Union hangs upon the nation's
appreciation of its value. Then only can we be intensely, ardently
zealous; full of courage and motive force; full of hope and
determination that it shall be preserved at whatever cost of life or
treasure. But without the deep conviction of the untold blessings that lie
yet undeveloped in the Union