let us pray for the quick coming of reconciliation and happiness under this common flag.  But we must build again, from the foundations, in all these now free Southern States.  No cheap exhortations “to forgetfulness of the past, to restore all things as they were,” will do.  God does not stretch out his hand, as he has for four dreadful years, that men may easily forget the might of his terrible acts.  Restore things as they were!  What, the alienations and jealousies, the discords and contentions, and the causes of them?  No.  In that solemn sacrifice on which a nation has offered for its sins so many precious victims, loved and lamented, let our sins and mistakes be consumed utterly and forever.  No, never again shall things be restored as before the war.  It is written in God’s decree of events fulfilled, “Old things are passed away.”  That new earth, in which dwelleth righteousness, draws near.  Things as they were!  Who has an omnipotent hand to restore a million dead, slain in battle or wasted by sickness, or dying of grief, broken-hearted?  Who has omniscience to search for the scattered ones?  Who shall restore the lost to broken families?  Who shall bring back the squandered treasure, the years of industry wasted, and convince you that four years of guilty rebellion and cruel war are no more than dirt upon the hand, which a moment’s washing removes and leaves the hand clean as before?  Such a war reaches down to the very vitals of society.  Emerging from such a prolonged rebellion, he is blind who tells you that the State, by a mere amnesty and benevolence of government, can be put again, by a mere decree, in its old place.  It would not be honest, it would not be kind or fraternal, for me to pretend that Southern revolution against the Union has not reacted, and wrought revolution in the Southern States themselves, and inaugurated a new dispensation.  Society here is like a broken loom, and the piece which Rebellion put in, and was weaving, has been cut, and every thread broken.  You must put in new warp and new woof, and weaving anew, as the fabric slowly unwinds we shall see in it no Gorgon figures, no hideous grotesques of the old barbarism, but the figures of liberty, vines, and golden grains, framing in the heads of justice, love, and liberty.  The august convention of 1787 formed the Constitution with this memorable preamble:  “We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain this Constitution for the United States of America.”  Again, in the awful convention of war, the people of the United States, for the very ends just recited, have debated, settled, and ordained certain fundamental truths, which must henceforth be accepted and obeyed.  Nor is any State nor any individual wise who shall disregard