With
high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to it is
ventured.
"On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago, all
thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All
dreaded it--all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address
was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving
the Union without war, insurgent agents were in the city seeking
to destroy it without war--seeking to dissolve the Union and
divide effects, by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war; but
one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive;
and the other would accept war rather than let it perish. And the
war came.
"One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not
distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the
southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and
powerful interest. All knew that this interest was, somehow, the
cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate and extend this
interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the
Union, even by war; while the government claimed no right to do
more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it.
"Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration
which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause
of the conflict might cease with, or even before, the conflict
itself should cease.
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