The job was a great national one, and let none be slighted who bore an honorable part in it.  And while those who have cleared the great river may well be proud, even that is not all.  It is hard to say that anything has been more bravely or well done than at Antietam, Murfreesboro’, Gettysburg, and on many fields of less note.  Nor must Uncle Sam’s web-feet be forgotten.  At all the watery margins they have been present, not only on the deep sea, the broad bay, and the rapid river, but also up the narrow muddy bayou, and wherever the ground was a little damp, they have been and made their tracks.  Thanks to all.  For the great Republic,—­for the principle it lives by and keeps alive,—­for man’s vast future,—­thanks to all.

Peace does not appear so distant as it did.  I hope it will come soon, and come to stay, and so come as to be worth the keeping in all future time.  It will then have been proved that among free men there can be no successful appeal from the ballot to the bullet, and that they who take such appeal are sure to lose their case and pay the cost.  And there will be some black men who can remember that with silent tongue, and clinched teeth, and steady eye, and well-poised bayonet, they have helped mankind on to this great consummation; while I fear there will be some white men unable to forget that with malignant heart and deceitful speech they have striven to hinder it.

Still, let us not be over-sanguine of a speedy final triumph.  Let us be quite sober.  Let us diligently apply the means, never doubting that a just God, in his own good time, will give us the rightful result.

Yours very truly,

A. LINCOLN.

This was a fair statement of past facts and of the present condition; and thus the plain tokens of the time showed that the menace of disaffection had been met and sufficiently conquered.  The President had let the nation see the strength of his will and the immutability of his purpose.  He had faced bullying Republican politicians, a Democratic reaction, Copperheadism, and mob violence, and by none of these had he been in the least degree shaken or diverted from his course.  On the contrary, from so many and so various struggles he had come out the victor, a real ruler of the country.  He had shown that whenever and by whomsoever, and in whatever part of the land he was pushed to use power, he would use it.  Temporarily the great republic was under a “strong government,” and Mr. Lincoln was the strength.  Though somewhat cloaked by forms, there was for a while in the United States a condition of “one-man power,” and the people instinctively recognized it, though they would on no account admit it in plain words.  In fact every malcontent knew that there was no more use in attempting to resist the American President than in attempting to resist a French emperor or a Russian czar; there was even less use, for while the President managed on one plausible ground or another to have and to exercise all the power