Christians may acknowledge that, as a rule, and in the long run, the
decision of a country, fairly taken, is likely to be right, and that
the will of the people is likely to be more just and patient than that
of any person or class. No one can honestly look at the history of our
race in the last quarter of a century, to go no farther back, and not
gladly admit the weight of evidence in favor of this view. There is
no great question of principle which has arisen in politics here, in
which the great mass of the nation has not been from the first on that
which has been at last acknowledged as the right side. In America,
to take one great example, the attitude of the Northern people from
first to last, in the great civil war, will make proud the hearts of
English-speaking men as long as their language lasts.