“Resistless eloquence shall open
  The gates that steel exclude,”

we peacefully appeal to that sense of justice which is the “touch of nature that makes the whole world kin,” and behold! the interdiction is removed; the doors of the mysterious empire fly open, and a new garland is added to our commercial conquests!  Who shall set limits to the gain that shall follow this one victory of peace, if our government shall be perpetuated so as to gather it for the generations?  Who shall say that in an unbroken, undivided union, the opening of the empire of Japan shall not accomplish for the present era all that the Reformation, the art of printing, steam, and the telegraph have done within the last three hundred years?  New avenues of wealth are thrown open; new fields are to be occupied; arts new to us, perhaps, are to be studied; and science, doubtless, has revelations to make us, from that arcana of nations, equal to anything we have ever learned before.  Fifty millions of people are to be enlightened; the printing press is yet to catch the daily thought and stamp it on the page; the magnetic wire must yet tremble along her highways, and Niphon yet tremble to her very centre at each heart-beat of our ocean steamers, as they sweep through her waters and thunder round her island homes.  All hail, all hail, to these children of the morning; all hail, all hail, to the Great Republic of the West that calls them into life!  From every age that has passed there comes a song of praise for the treaty that has been consummated.  The buried masters of three thousand years start again to life and march in solemn and grand procession before the eyes of the new-found empire.  Homer with his songs, Greece with her arts, Rome with her legions, and America with her heroes, all come to us with the freshness and novelty of the newly born.  Wipe off the mold that time has gathered upon their tombs, and let them all come forth and answer, at the summons of a new-born nation that calls them again to life!

Tell to these strangers the story of the resurrection.  Clutching in their hands their dripping blades, the warriors recount their conquests, and joined at last in harmonious brotherhood, Copernicus, with bony fingers pointing upward, tells to Confucius his story of the stars!

Fellow-citizens, I have recounted but one of our many peaceful triumphs.  Shall all these hopes of the future, shall all these peaceful victories of our people, shall all these struggles of the past be swept away by the dissolution of this Union and the destruction of the government?  Forbid it, Almighty God!  Rather perish a thousand times the cause of the rebellion, and over the ruins of slavery let peace once more resume her sway, and let the cannon’s lips grow cold. Delenda est Carthago, said the old Roman patriot, when gloom settled upon his State.  The rebellion must go down in the same spirit, say we all to-day.