A little more letting alone, and the weight would have crushed America; it was time to act.  The Abolition party, or rather the party opposed to the extension of slavery, has acted with a resolution which should excite our sympathies.  The future of the United States was at stake; it knew it, and it struggled in consequence.  Remember the efforts essayed four years ago for the election of Mr. Fremont, efforts which would have succeeded perhaps, if Mr. Fremont had not been a Catholic.  Remember those three months of balloting, by which the North succeeded in carrying the election of speaker of the House of Representatives.  Remember the conduct of the North, in the sad affair of John Brown, its refusal to approve an illegal act, its admiration of the heroic farmer who died after having witnessed the death of his sons.  On seeing the public mourning of the Free States, on hearing the minute gun discharged in the capital of the State of New York on the day of execution, one might have foreseen the irresistible impulse which has just ended in the triumph of Mr. Lincoln.

The indignation against slavery, the love of country and of its compromised honor, the just susceptibilities of the North, the liberal instincts so long repressed, the desire of elevating the debased and corrupt institutions of the land, the need of escaping insane projects, the powerful impulse of the Christian faith, all these sentiments contributed, without doubt, to swell the resistance against which the supremacy of the South has just been broken.  This, then, is a legal victory, one of the most glorious spectacles that the friends of liberty can contemplate on earth.  It was the more glorious, the more efforts and sacrifices it demanded.  The Lincoln party had opposed to it, the Puseyistic and financial aristocracy of New York; the manoeuvres of President Buchanan were united against it with those of the Southern States.  Many of the Northern journals accused it of treading under foot the interests of the seaports, and of compromising the sacred cause of the Union.

To succeed in electing Mr. Lincoln, we must not forget that it was necessary to put the question of principle above the questions of immediate interests, which usually make themselves heard so distinctly.  The unity, the greatness of the country, the gigantic future towards which it was advancing, were so many obstacles arising in the way.  Then came the reckoning of profits and losses, the inevitable crisis, the Southern orders already withdrawn, the certain loss of money; it seems to me that men who have braved such chances, have nobly accomplished their duty.