Page:The Civil War in America - an address read at the last meeting of the Manchester Union and Emancipation Society.djvu/87

Rh Early in the year 1865, came the collapse and downfall of the Slaveholders’ Confederacy.

In the first year of peace, ere the nation had ceased to mourn the loss of thousands of her bravest sons, and the death of her Martyr-President, Abraham Lincoln, the people of the United States amended the Federal Constitution—abolishing and for ever prohibiting Slavery throughout their great Republic.

By this act millions of our fellow creatures emerged from the condition of chattlehood into the higher region of manhood; the stain which had disfigured the national flag of the United States was removed; all her fruitful lands were opened to the civilising and ennobling influences of free labour; and the blessings of free schools, a free press, and free government were secured as an inheritance for ever.

The United States have thus proved to the world that “a government of the people, by the people, for the people,” is competent to organise and wield vast combinations of power; to administer resources of extraordinary magnitude; to carry out the highest purposes of statesmanship to their most successful issues; and in the hour of triumph can exhibit a moderation of spirit and clemency towards the vanquished unexampled in history.

The spectacle of hundreds of thousands of patriot soldiers returning to their peaceful callings and the duties of citizenship, is another suggestive lesson to the unenfranchised peoples, taxed to support the military monarchies of Europe.

We commend to the benevolent consideration of our countrymen the claims of the freedmen of the United States, whose sufferings, in their transition from bondage