The world has never seen such a display of courage and devotion as was
exhibited by the intelligent masses of the freemen of the North, when the
liberties of the great republic were menaced by the fierce gestures of the
slave faction and their misguided supporters.
Men of all classes, forsaking home, kindred, and property, rushed to
present a living barrier to the impetuous march of the enraged and
misguided horde that pressed on with almost resistless fury, and
threatened to overwhelm and destroy the noblest fabric of the enlightened
mind. At last the carnage of battle has ceased. Nature smiles again, and
rapidly obliterates the marks of the ravages left upon her green fields,
where the huge and desperate armies have swayed and struggled in deadly
conflict. The emblems of civil liberty are again restored, the fasces
replaced; and it now becomes the country to arouse itself from the depths
of apathy, and revive those sentiments of tenderness and gratitude which
nature everywhere bestows upon the memory of those who upheld the cause of
liberty, and fell in its defence.