Thus will they expand
to the amplitude of their destiny, and become illustrations and
culminating parts of the kosmos, and of civilization.
No more considering the States as an incident, or series of incidents,
however vast, coming accidentally along the path of time, and shaped
by casual emergencies as they happen to arise, and the mere result
of modern improvements, vulgar and lucky, ahead of other nations and
times, I would finally plant, as seeds, these thoughts or speculations
in the growth of our republic--that it is the deliberate culmination
and result of all the past--that here, too, as in all departments of
the universe, regular laws (slow and sure in planting, slow and sure
in ripening) have controll'd and govern'd, and will yet control and
govern; and that those laws can no more be baffled or steer'd clear
of, or vitiated, by chance, or any fortune or opposition, than the
laws of winter and summer, or darkness and light.
The summing up of the tremendous moral and military perturbations of
1861-'65, and their results--and indeed of the entire hundred years of
the past of our national experiment, from its inchoate movement down
to the present day (1780-1881)--is, that they all now launch the
United States fairly forth, consistently with the entirety of
civilization and humanity, and in main sort the representative of
them, leading the van, leading the fleet of the modern and democratic,
on the seas and voyages of the future.
And the real history of the United States--starting from that great
convulsive struggle for unity, the secession war, triumphantly
concluded, and _the South_ victorious after all--is only to be written
at the remove of hundreds, perhaps a thousand, years hence.
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