in the fruits of victory, I believe that generous resolution would have conferred in all future ages incalculable blessings on the human race.
They would have supplied the advocates of freedom hereafter with a peerless model. They would have realised the ideals of its friends, and disarmed the resistance of its foes. The cause that was to triumph comes forth from the conflict with renovated strength, and confirmed in the principles which must react dangerously on the other countries of the world. The spurious liberty of the United States is twice cursed, for it deceives those whom it attracts and those whom it repels. By exhibiting the spectacle of a people claiming to be free, but whose love of freedom means hatred of inequality, jealousy of limitations to power, and reliance on the State as an instrument to mould as well as to control society, it calls on its admirers to hate aristocracy and teaches its adversaries to fear the people. The North has used the doctrines of Democracy to destroy self-government. The South applied the principle of conditional federation to cure the evils and to correct the errors of a false interpretation of Democracy.
After paying a tribute to the genius of General Lee, the lecturer concluded as follows: It is a noble sight to see this mighty soldier, the greatest of the countrymen of Washington, exhorting his people to obey their conquerors, and giving the example of peaceful retirement and submission. But it is also a noble sight to see the chief of a mighty and victorious nation, who was not trained to greatness, but was taken from the tailor's board and raised to his high place when passions were inflamed by an intoxicating triumph and an awful crime, staying the hand of vengeance, remitting punishment and disbanding armies, and treating as an equal the man who had been so lately and so long the most terrible of enemies, and whose splendid talents had inflicted on the people of the Union a gigantic loss in treasure, blood, and fame. It is too soon to despair of a community that has among its leading citizens such men as these.
