THE PROPHET OF SAN FRANCISCO. 27
all know that not many years ago the United States was engaged in a civil war of long duration, at one time apparently of doubtful issue, and on which the national existence hung. I was one of those not too many in this country who held from the beginning of that ter- rible contest that "the North" were right in fighting it. Lord Russell, on a celebrated occasion, said that they were fighting for "dominion." Yes; and for what else have nations ever fought, and by what else than dominion, in one sense or another have great nations ever come to be ? The Demos has no greater right to fight for dominion than Kings ; but it has the same. But behind and above the existence of the Union as a nation there was the further question involved whether, in this nineteenth century of the Christian era, there was to be established a great dominion of civilized men which was to have negro slavery as its fundamental doctrine and as the cherished basis of its constitution. On both of these great questions the people of the Northern States in whatever propor- tions the one or the other issue might affect individual minds had before them as noble a cause as any which has ever called men to arms. It is a cause which will be forever associated in the memory of mankind with one great figure the figure of Abraham Lincoln, the best and highest representative of the American people in that tremendous crisis. In nothing has the bearing of that people been more admirable than in the patient and willing submission of the masses, as of one man, not only to the desolating sacrifice of life which it entailed, but to the heavy and lasting burden of taxation which was insepa- rable from it. It is indeed deplorable nothing I have ever read in all literature has struck me as so deplorable that at this time of day, when by patient continu- ance in well-doing the burden has become comparatively light, and there is a near prospect of its final disappear-
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