I Should Be Glad If I Could

God Bless The Union; - It Is Dearer To Us For The Blood Of Brave Men Which Has Been Shed In Its Defence.

The Heart Of The People, North And South, Is For The Union.

I Feel, As Never Before, How Justly, From The Dawn Of History To The Present Time, Men Have Paid The Homage Of Their Gratitude And Admiration To The Memory Of Those Who Nobly Sacrifice Their Lives, That Their Fellow-men May Live In Safety And In Honor.

Does It Seem All But Incredible To You That Intelligence Should Travel For Two Thousand Miles, Along Those Slender Copper Lines, Far Down In The All But Fathomless Atlantic; Never Before Penetrated … Save When Some Foundering Vessel Has Plunged With Her Hapless Company To The Eternal Silence And Darkness Of The Abyss? Does It Seem … But A Miracle … That The Thoughts Of Living Men … Should Burn Over The Cold, Green Bones Of Men And Women, Whose Hearts, Once As Warm As Ours, Burst As The Eternal Gulfs Closed And Roared Over Them Centuries Ago?

A Great Character, Founded On The Living Rock Of Principle Is, In Fact, Not A Solitary Phenomenon, To Be At Once Perceived, Limited, And Described. It Is A Dispensation Of Providence, Designed To Have Not Merely An Immediate, But A Continuous, Progressive, And Never-ending Agency. It Survives The Man Who Possessed It; Survives His Age,--and Perhaps, His Country, His Language.