slave-trade?  For this we spend three millions a day, and lives whose value cannot be expressed in dollars,—­for this anguish will sit for years at thousands of desolate hearths, and be the only legacy of fatherless children.  For what glory will they inherit whose fathers fell to save still a chance or two for Slavery?  It is for this we are willing to incur the moral and financial hazards of a great struggle,—­to furnish an Anti-Republican party of reconstructionists with a bridge for Slavery to reach a Northern platform, to frown at us again from the chair of State.  The Federal picket who perchance fell last night upon some obscure outpost of our great line of Freedom has gone up to Heaven protesting against such cruel expectations, wherever they exist; and they exist wherever apathy exists, and old hatred lingers, and wherever minds are cowed and demoralized by the difficulties of this question.  In his body is a bullet run by Slavery, and sent by its unerring purpose; his comrades will raise over him a little hillock upon which Slavery will creep to look out for future chances,—­ruthlessly scanning the political horizon from the graves of our unnamed heroes.  This, and eight dollars a month, will his wife inherit; and if she ever sees his grave, she will see a redoubt which the breast of her husband raises for some future defence of Slavery.  The People, who are waging this war, and who are actually getting at the foe through the bristling ranks of politicians and contractors, must have such a moral opinion upon this question as to defeat these dreadful possibilities.  Let us be patient, because we see some difficulties; but let us give up the war itself sooner than our resolution, that, either by this war, or after it, Slavery shall be stripped of its insignia, and turned out to cold and irretrievable disgrace, weaponless, fangless, and with no object in the world worthy of its cunning.  We can be patient, but we must also be instant and unanimous in insisting that the whole of Slavery shall pay the whole of Freedom’s bill.  Then the dear names whose sound summons imperatively our tears shall be proudly handed in by us to History, as we bid her go with us from grave to grave to see how the faith of a people watched them against the great American Body Snatcher, and kept them inviolate to be her memorials.  We feel our hearts reinforced by the precious blood which trickled from Ball’s Bluff into the Potomac, and was carried thence into the great sea of our conscience, tumultuous with pride, anger, and resolve.  The drops feed the country’s future, wherever they are caught first by our free convictions ere they sink into the beloved soil.  Let us be instant, be incisive with our resolution, that peace may not be the mother of another war, and our own victory rout ourselves.

Blow, North-wind, blow!  Keep that bearded field of bayonets levelled southward!  Rustle, robes of Liberty, who art walking terribly over the land, with sombre countenance, and garments rolled in blood!  See, she advances with one hand armed with Justice, while the other points to that exquisite symmetry half revealed, as if beckoning thitherward her children back again to the pure founts of life!  “Be not afraid,” she cries, “of the noise of my garments and their blood-stains; for this is the blood of a new covenant of Freedom, shed to redeem and perpetuate a chosen land.”