long delay terminate hostilities by the jugglery of a compromise. The gloomy apprehensions of such a disaster were fast seizing upon the public mind; but the recent successes of our arms, on many fields of heroic valor have lifted the burden from the heart of the nation, and set it once more on its way of promise and of hope. The rebellion is to be subdued by the Army, not by concessions to treason; by the earnestness of war, not by the chicane of diplomacy. ... It is impossible for us to be at peace with a power which takes slavery, the stone which our fathers rejected, and defiantly makes it the head of its corner. The object of this war upon our part is to restore the authority of the Government wherever it has been displaced, to enable the people ultimately to return to State governments in the Union, and to the full enjoyments of all their rightful possessions; except in so far as they may be deprived of them by the shock of war in the effort to subdue the rebellion and prevent its recurrence. It is vain and foolish to expect or desire the original status of things as it was before the disturbances. We cannot expect the dead to rise from their bloody graves, nor homes once happy to spring up out of their ashes. For the losses of trade, of property of every kind taken, injured, or destroyed, there will be no recompense but in the lessons of wisdom they will teach; and when we see slavery gorged with the blood of the slain, and rioting in the havoc of war ... if the angels shall keep their vigils around about it, so that nothing in all the conflict shall do it harm, then must we, indeed, believe that it is a divine and sacred thing." Blair went on in this speech to declare, "Slavery is the great primary cause" of the war, adding: "It prompted the war, sustains and supports it, and it is waged for the openly avowed purpose of its perpetuation. No amount of sophistry can gainsay the truth of this proposition.... The monster is too gross, bald, and palpable to be concealed by all the disguises which ingenuity can weave. History will so write it down as plain truth.... I believe that unless we have the courage and the resolution to