I have not sought to recount events, but to attempt a study, which I believe to be useful to us, and which may, also, not be useless to the United States.  We owe them the support of our sympathy.  It is more important than people imagine to let them hear words of encouragement from us at this decisive moment.  Let us not hasten to declare that the Union is destroyed, that, henceforth and forever, there will be two Confederacies existing on the same footing, that the United States of slavery will have their great role to perform here below, like the United States of liberty.  This would be, in any case, immense exaggeration.  Let us not forget that the Union has often before seemed lost, that the Confederation has often before seemed ready to perish.  Are the men who are terrified at the present perils, ignorant of those which surrounded the cradle of the United States:  mutinous troops, contending ambitions, threats of separation, anarchy, ruin?  This America, then so weak, is the same that has since become so strong, in spite of its own faults.  At the moment when it rebelled against England, it had neither arts and manufactures, nor commerce, nor marine; and its two or three millions of inhabitants were far from agreeing among themselves.  Yet such is the vigor of its genius, such is its carelessness of every kind of danger, such is the impetuosity with which it affronts and surmounts obstacles, such is the power of its national motto; “Go ahead!” that through internal struggles, crises, and momentary exhaustion, it has attained the stature of a great people.  Count the steamboats on its rivers, estimate the tonnage of its vessels, compute the amount of its internal trade, measure the length of its canals and railroads, and you will still have but a faint idea of what it is capable of undertaking and accomplishing.

We must remember these things, and not imitate those enemies of America who sometimes feign to put on mourning for her, sometimes jest at her distress, and find in the present situation of the disunited States (for thus they style them) an agreeable subject for pleasantry, forgetting that this disunion has a serious cause, which is certainly of importance enough to make itself understood; forgetting, too, that generous struggles for humanity and the country are worthy to obtain our fullest respect.  And let us beware how we say that this crisis does not concern us—­that we can do nothing in it.  The selfish isolation of nations is henceforth impossible.  The question to be decided here involves our own affairs, not only because a portion of our fortune is pledged to the United States, but, above all, because our principles and our liberties are concerned.  The victories of justice, wherever they may be won, are the victories of the human race.