Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from The Great Deliverance and the New Career: An Oration Delivered Before the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Union College at Schenectady, N. Y., On the 25th July, 1865
It is in the hour of triumph that the coun try can most effectually provide that no such perils as we have now survived, no such crimes as have filled us with horror, shall recur again. In doing that, we must cherish no thought of vengeance. Ven geance belongs to God, and he will repay. But we must not trifle with our destiny; we must Ifitt forget that the result we have reached is one of pure force. We must per fectly comprehend that we are not standing on the threshold of a political millennium, which must necessarily emerge from the past, and which Opens ofitself upon our ad vancing footrteps; but that we are standing in the midst of hundreds of thousands of slain men, whose blood is to be answered for to God victims of the most unprovoked example of the most ferocious kind of war, waged with the most desperate purpose, and designed to produce the most terrible results. The very completeness of the con quest, when it came, is a fearful proof of the relentless ferocity with which the tri umph was resisted; and so is a perpetual warning, that to make the fruits of it sure and lasting, is only less important, and may be only less difficult, than to have won the triumph itself. The fruits I speak of are not peculiar to the conquering, more than to the conquered portion of the inhabitants of the United States. They are fruits which must be secured, as the grand results of the war, to the whole restored nation. They are the principles and the objects for which we fought; the imperishable truths for which we risked everything, and won; won for ourse'ves, for our latest posterity, for our whole country, and, in God's good time, for the human race. We Wlll have no more treason: satisfy us, then, that no more is to come. We will endure no more revolt; make us sure no more is meditated. We will permit no more insurrection; convince us there will be no more. As we will an swer to God, we must redress these hellish conspiracies; these torturing and starving of prisoners to dt-ath these burning of titles, and murdering travellers, poisoning commu nities, and spreading mortal infectious dls eases; these horrible assassinations: unhat ural crimes, which they who overlook and pass by when' they might punish them. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
