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This is something that altogether transcends any partisan politics. It is of comparatively little consequence to us whether Congress or the President carry the day, provided only that America triumph. That is, after all, the real question. On which side is the future of the country,–the future that we cannot escape if we would, but which our action may embarrass and retard? If we had looked upon the war as a mere trial of physical strength between two rival sections of the country, we should have been the first to oppose it, as a wicked waste of treasure and blood. But it was something much deeper than this, and so the people of the North instinctively recognized it to be from the first,–instinctively, we say, and not deliberately at first; but before it was over, their understandings had grasped its true meaning, as an effort of the ideal America, which was to them half a dream and half a reality, to cast off an alien element. It was this ideal something, not the less strongly felt because vaguely defined, that made them eager, as only what is above sordid motives can, to sacrifice all that they had and all that they were rather than fail in its attainment. And it is to men not yet cooled from the white-heat of this passionate mood that Mr. Johnson comes with his paltry offer of “my policy,” in exchange for the logical consequences of all this devotion and this sacrifice. What is any one man’s policy, and especially any one weak man’s policy, against the settled drift of a nation’s conviction, conscience, and instinct? The American people had made up not only their minds, but their hearts, and no man who knows anything of human nature could doubt what their decision would be. They wanted only a sufficient obstacle to awaken them to a full consciousness of what was at stake, and that obstacle the obstinate vanity of the President and the blindness or resentment of his prime minister have supplied. They are fully resolved to have the great stake they played for and won, and that stake was the Americanization of all America, nothing more and nothing less. Mr. Johnson told us in New York, with so profound a misconception of the feeling of the Northern States as was only possible to a vulgar mind, and that mind a Southern one, that the South had set up slavery as its stake, and lost, and that now the North was in danger of losing the stake it had risked on reconstruction in the national debt. Mr. Johnson is still, it would seem, under that delusion which led the South into the war; namely, that it was that section of the country which was the chief element in its wealth and greatness. But no Northern man, who, so long as he lives, will be obliged to pay his fine of taxes for the abolition of slavery which was forced upon us by the South, is likely to think it very hard that the South should be compelled to furnish its share toward the common burden, or will be afraid that the loyal States, whose urgent demands compelled a timid Congress at last to impose direct taxes, will be unable to meet their obligations in the future, as in the past.

We say again that the questions before the country are not to be decided on any grounds of personal prejudice or partiality. We are far from thinking that Congress has in all respects acted as became the dignity of its position, or seized all the advantage of the opportunity. They have seemed to us sometimes afraid of coming before the people with a direct, frank, and simple statement of what was not only the best thing that could be done, but the one thing that must be done. They were afraid of the people, and did not count securely, as they should have done, on that precious seeing which four years of gradually wakening moral sense had lent to the people’s eyes. They should not have shrunk from taking upon themselves and their party all the odium of being in the right; of being on the side of justice, humanity, and of the America which is yet to be, whoever may fear to help and whoever may try to hinder. The vulgar cry would be against them, at any rate, and they might reckon on being accused of principles which they thought it prudent to conceal, whether they committed their party to them or not. With those who have the strong side, as they always do who have conscience for an ally, a bold policy is the only prosperous one. It is always wisest to accept in advance all the logical consequences that can be drawn from the principles we profess, and to make a stand on the extremest limits of our position. It will be time enough to fall back when we are driven out. In taking a half-way position at first, we expose ourselves to all the disadvantage and discouragement of seeming to fight on a retreat, and cut ourselves off from our supplies. For the supplies of a party which is contending for a clear principle, and not for its own immediate success, are always drawn from the highest moral ground included in its lines. We are not speaking here of abstractions or wire-drawn corollaries, but of those plain ethical axioms which every man may apprehend, and which are so closely involved in the question now before the country for decision. We at least could lose nothing by letting the people know exactly what we meant; for we meant nothing that could not claim the suffrage of sincere democracy, of prudent statesmanship, or of jealousy for the nation’s honor and safety. That the Republican party should be broken up is of comparatively little consequence; for it would be merged in the stronger party of those who are resolved that no by-questions, no fallacies of generosity to the vanquished, shall turn it aside from the one fixed purpose it has at heart; that the war shall not have been in vain; and that the Rebel States, when they return to the Union, shall return to it as an addition of power, and under such terms as that they must, and not merely may, be fixed there. Let us call things by their right names, and keep clearly in view both the nature of the thing vanquished and of the war in which we were victors. When men talk of generosity toward a suppliant foe, they entirely forget what that foe really was. To the people of the South no one thinks of being unmerciful. But they were only the blind force wielded by our real enemy,–an enemy, prophesy what smooth things you will, with whom we can never be reconciled and whom it would be madness to spare. And this enemy was not any body of kindred people, but that principle of evil fatally repugnant to our institutions, which, flinging away the hilt of its broken weapon, is now cheating itself with the hope that it can forge a new one of the soft and treacherous metal of Northern disloyalty. The war can in no respect be called a civil war, though that was what the South, in its rash ignorance, threatened the North with. It was as much a war between two different nations, and the geographical line was as distinctly drawn between them, as in the late war between North and South Germany. They had been living, it is true, under the same government, but the South regarded this as implying no tie more intimate than that which brought the representatives of Prussia and Austria together in the Frankfort Diet. We have the same right to impose terms and to demand guaranties that Prussia has, that the victor always has.