are responsible for having compelled true patriots to love only half
their country instead of the whole, and brave soldiers to draw their
swords against the Constitution which they would once have died
for,--to draw them, too, with a bitterness of animosity which is the
only symptom of brotherhood (since brothers hate each other best) that
any longer exists. They whisper these things with tears in their eyes,
and shake their heads, and stoop their poor old shoulders, at the
tidings of another and another Northern victory, which, in their
opinion, puts farther off the remote, the already impossible chance of
a reunion.

I am sorry for them, though it is by no means a sorrow without hope.
Since the matter has gone so far, there seems to be no way but to go on
winning victories, and establishing peace and a truer union in another
generation, at the expense, probably, of greater trouble, in the
present one, than any other people ever voluntarily suffered. We woo
the South "as the Lion wooes his bride"; it is a rough courtship, but
perhaps love and a quiet household may come of it at last. Or, if we
stop short of that blessed consummation, heaven was heaven still, as
Milton sings, after Lucifer and a third part of the angels had seceded
from its golden palaces,--and perhaps all the more heavenly, because
so many gloomy brows, and soured, vindictive hearts, had gone to plot
ineffectual schemes of mischief elsewhere. [Footnote: We regret the
innuendo in the concluding sentence. The war can never be allowed to
terminate, except in the complete triumph of Northern principles. We
hold the event in our own hands, and may choose whether to terminate it
by the methods already so successfully used, or by other means equally
within our control, and calculated to be still more speedily
efficacious. In truth, the work is already done.