Page:The Civil War in America - an address read at the last meeting of the Manchester Union and Emancipation Society.djvu/7



HE civil war in America is over; the armies have gone home; the passions have subsided; and though the ashes still glow, though the time when an impartial history can be written has not arrived, we may try to understand the real import of the conflict—the real significance of the victory—and to read, as far as mortal eyes may read, the counsels of Providence in this the great event of our age.

This great struggle, like most of the great struggles in history, was complex in its character. In some measure its character changed as it went on. On the Southern side most were fighting for Slavery, but some for State Right. On the Northern side some were fighting against Slavery, but many were fighting for the Union. At the North the Anti-Slavery sentiment grew more predominant towards the close, both because the moral feeling of the people had been stirred and elevated by the struggle, and because they saw more clearly that Slavery was the root of the political evil, and a root from which, unless it was plucked up, the same evil would always grow. At first the majority would have compromised with Slavery for the sake of the Union, the source, as they deemed it, of their greatest blessings, the object of their fondest and most hallowed associations. If there is a nation which would readily