Page:The Civil War in America - an address read at the last meeting of the Manchester Union and Emancipation Society.djvu/55

Rh after all belonged the future of mankind! But if the slave-owners had the strength of an oligarchy, the Federals had the far greater strength of a community, and in that strength they conquered. For the sake of their community they learned obedience in war, a more effective obedience than that which the conscript yields under the lash. They turned their vast industry to a new purpose, and produced on a marvellous scale, with marvellous rapidity, and with marvellous excellence, all the materials of war. They drew military aptitude from all the grades of an educated and intelligent community, and raised it to command. With the power of voluntary association, which the members of a real community alone possess, they aided their government in its new and colossal task. They sustained it through all reverses, and in spite of all its errors, with the loyalty which can be paid only by a real community to the government of its choice. They animated it, and all who under it fought or laboured for the common cause, with the spirit of a united people. Gradually the resources of the slave oligarchy began to fail. The conscription laws, to which almost from the outset it had been forced to resort, though supported by the sternest military discipline, were ineffectual to keep its white serfs in the line. It was compelled to tear the veil from its own hypocrisy, and to ask the negro, to whom it had denied the rights and the very name of man, to shed his blood as a fellow-citizen for a common country; though with a proviso that if he conquered in the common cause the property of his master in him should remain unchanged. The operations of the Federals, now directed by officers of the highest merit, were better combined, and pressed at all points on the enemy, who before, by moving swiftly from point to