Various

“ To aid in sustaining this beneficent institution, New York is about to inaugurate a great Metropolitan Fair. She asks in the sacred name of freedom and humanity that her children come together with the works of their hands, the results of their enterprise, the achievements of their talents, the bloom of their genius, to do her honor in a Great Exhibition of Art, Industry, Commerce, all devoted to the cause of human progress. She begs of her children to do the work which is given them to do, with a spirit of love and patriotism, remembering no private griefs, no unworthy animosities ”

“ There will be a violent reaction in Southern sentiment, and a storm of indignation will be hurled against the instigators of rebellion for all the torture and agony and ruin they have brought to the millions of a once happy nation. The war for the Union will yet find an altar in every Southern home; it will become as truly appreciated there as here; the Southern people will one day glory as greatly in its magnificent results. There will be no longer a few thousand aristocrats, calling themselves 'the South,' and teaching hatred to freedom and progress. ”

“ If there be so little to create apprehension for the future, may we not rationally hope that the diminution of war, if not its ultimate extinction, is one of the promises of political unity?
Great, strong, noble men—those who are great and noble in all the elements of their nature—such are never pugilists, and never fight: it is those of distorted and defective development—those who have not completeness and integrality within themselves, that are turbulent and break the peace. ”

“ The eternal advance toward omniscience goes on, but is like that of the infinite approach of the asymptote, which never reaches the hyperbolic curve. The onward of science is in a geometrical ratio, so that in time, the intellectual progress of a day in the future, must exceed that of a century in the past. Knowledge is enthroned as king, and grand truths and new ideas are his ministers. Science takes the diameter of the earth's orbit as a base line and unit of measurement, and with it spans immensity, and triangulates the nebulous systems amid the shadowy verges of receding space. ”

“ But the sentiment, emotion, passion, the character, so to speak, of the statue, is the creation of the artist, the offspring of his quickened brain.
It is to express the æsthetic idea struggling in the soul of genius, that the marble takes its form, the canvas its color, sweet sounds combine in melody, and language weaves itself into the wreath of song. The same divine impulse, the same grasping after a higher excellence inspires the sculptor, the painter, the composer, and the poet, but some chance bent of nature has decided them to choose different mediums of expression. ”

“ In order to realize the truth, we must behold Virginia as she would have been, with New York railroads and canals, farms, manufactures, commerce, towns, and cities. Then we must consider the superior natural advantages of Virginia, her far greater area, her richer soil, her more genial sun, her greater variety of products, her mines of coal, iron, gold, copper, and lead, her petroleum, her superior hydraulic power, her much larger coast line, with more numerous and deeper harbors—and reflect what Virginia would have been in the absence of slavery. ”

“ It declares man to be more than a slave driven by motives, with every action necessitated; it declares him a creature of free volition, whose action can neither be calculated nor controlled. It declares him possessed of powers of love and hate, which defy mathematics; a being above all price, to whom honesty may be more than 'the best policy,' even the loving obedience of a child to a loving Father. It declares society to be no mere framework tied together by interest, but a brotherhood, like a living soul, having a common Father, Saviour, and Home. ”

“ Unitization is therefore in the line of political development; it has gained strength with the march of civilization and the growth of intelligence and freedom among the people. Our struggle, therefore, would seem to be a spontaneous uprising of the people for the security of a cardinal principle—a great torrent of human movement, surging forward with the stream of political development. History is, in its deepest heart, upon the side of unity, and ours is a sure faith that victory will crown our efforts. ”

“ The most imbittering and offensive thing that can ever be done to those men is done the moment you pronounce the words of freedom and human rights, in conjunction with each other, as if they were the same thing. That done, every other measure grows mild. To territorialize the whole South, and place a satrap over every parish and county of it—saying no word for freedom—would be a gentle and conciliating procedure compared with the most innocent utterance of a mere sentiment in behalf of emancipation and the elevation of the negro to the status of a man. ”

“ The history of philosophy is but a history of the conflict of these two ideas: in the life of the individual also, the same great question arises, whether he can be what he will, or will be what he must. From this come all those articles on 'Nature and Circumstances,' 'Genius and Labor,' with which college magazines are filled—endeavors of the young mind to solve this most vital problem. Modern society has declared itself on the side of necessity: while acknowledging man preeminently free in his relations to others, it yet considers him as the bondslave of motives. ”

“ Let our nation comprehend from within the march of its vast destinies, its true and ever-growing force in the love and self-sacrifice of its children. Let the benediction of our American Evangel, 'All men are born free and equal,' sound on until all voices swell in the grand diapason of everywhere harmonious and united Humanity, for this is the strength of man and the true meaning of our Union. ”

“ They go hand in hand; and national unity cannot be violated and broken, without, at the same time, necessitating despotism, and curtailing the individual in the exercise of his legitimate rights. Unity and liberty are mutually dependent and forever inseparable. Hence the inestimable value of unity, the leading issue of the war.
The issues of the war might be symbolized by the picture of a great river; the smaller branches forming still larger ones, and these putting into the main stream—unity—itself, as it descends, widening into the great ocean of the future. ”

“ Is this conflict of opinion to become more and more consolidated and defined, and finally embodied in two great hostile camps, covering the whole earth with an actual war, replete with desolation and carnage—not a war of distinct nationalities, but of the partisans of the two great antagonistic drifts of human development? Is there to be literally the great battle of Armageddon in the world before the incoming of a better age? ”

“ But, if we add the earnings of commerce, the products of Pennsylvania must have exceeded those of Virginia much more than four to one, and have reached, per capita, nearly three to one. What but slavery could have produced such amazing results? Indeed, when we see the same effects in all the Free States as compared with all the Slave States, and in any of the Slave States, as compared with any of the Free States, the uniformity of results establishes the law beyond all controversy, that slavery retards immensely the progress of wealth and population. ”

“ No man can be religious without thought—continual, earnest thought, perceiving and defining duties; therefore, wherever religion comes, even the mind that was sunken in weakness is raised to renewed life. It is in this way that religion counterbalances the influence of division of labor. While this takes away the last incentive to thought on the part of the workman, degrading him to a cunning but expensive machine, religion gives to him a new spring of thought, vivifies his blunted mind by the power of transformed affections, and makes him again a man. ”

“ We must never forget that just as Force is the natural ally of Slavery, just so Reason is the natural ally of Freedom. When the South has been overcome in fair fight, we must give its reason a fair chance to assert itself. Military authority over each reclaimed State should last until the majority of the people have made up their mind to resume, in good faith, their old relations to the Government, and have had a fair opportunity to canvass how that resumption shall best be inaugurated. ”

“ Not only have slave codes interdicted, in every one of them, all adverse discussion of the institution, but a mob power has always been at hand to take summary vengeance upon it with Lynch law. These resorts were not a mere caprice; they were a necessity. Slavery being once accepted as the prime object, there was no alternative but to protect it just in this manner. But the war has ended all that. There can be no mobs where the bayonet governs; nor arbitrary local laws where general military law is paramount. The discussion of slavery is as free now in New Orleans as in New York. ”

“ I confess that, of all at Burnsville, it is in you my feelings of interest centre—you, whose romantic fidelity to your wife's memory has thrown a charm over your whole existence. It is a great treasure—is it not?—a heart so true, so loyal, so pure and faithful, that not one, no, not one of all the young and fair and good and fascinating from out this world's fair creation can divert it for a moment, or change its even, constant, ever-loving pulsations. Such a heart you possess, Joel Burns! ”

“ We have before shown how, by division of labor, affection and volition have been abstracted from life, while only a formal performance of duties by others remains, and it would be strange if, under such régime, these parts of the human nature should not become shrunken. But the soul is not wholly gone yet; the world is mistaken—a little is left which cannot be measured by dollars and cents, enough of benevolence yet to make tolerable, enough of faith and love in the hearts of a few holy men to keep the world from corruption. ”