Providence always accomplishes its ends by appropriate instrumentalities; and in our case there are natural causes adequate to the great result which seems to be inevitable.  In North America the principle of equal rights and of unobstructed individual progress has become the fundamental law of society.  It is needless to trace the origin and growth of this principle; but its operation has been so powerful and productive, so fully imbued with moral and intellectual power, so solid and safe as a basis of national organization, as shown in the marvellous history of the United States, that no uncongenial principle is capable of resisting it, or even of maintaining an existence by its side.  This is true not only with regard to that antagonistic principle which is now desperately but hopelessly waging a suicidal war within the bosom of the great republic; but it is equally true with regard to that insidious germ of despotism, which threatens to push its way through the soil of a neighboring country, displacing the free institutions which have long and sadly languished amid the civil wars of a most unhappy people.  The same vigorous vitality which will renew the growth of our national authority and maintain it in the Union, will, at the same time, establish its predominant influence on the continent.  Having overborne and rooted out every opposing principle within the boundaries of our own imperial domain, its growth will be so majestic that every unfriendly influence which may possibly have secured a feeble foothold in its vicinity during its perilous struggle, will soon wither in the shadow of its greatness and disappear from around it.  Foreign nations may exert their sinister authority in the Old World, and plant their peculiar institutions in that congenial soil, with their accustomed success; but no amount of skilful manipulation will preserve these exotics when transplanted in the American soil.  The prevailing elements are not suited to their organization; they cannot be naturalized and acclimated.  This continent, with its peculiar population and antecedents, has its own political fauna and flora, fixed by nature and destiny, which cannot be utterly changed at the will of any human authority.

The most wicked and disastrous experiment of the age has been tried upon the grandest scale.  It was a bold undertaking to break up the American Union, and to arrest the progress of its benign principles.  To the great relief and joy of almost universal humanity, the monstrous attempt is about to result in disgraceful failure.  Yet this prodigious enterprise of destruction was initiated under the most favorable circumstances, with the most auspicious promise for its fatal success.  The malignant envy of all the instruments of despotism throughout the whole civilized world were brought to bear against us for the accomplishment of a work of stupendous ruin—­the annihilation of American nationality, American power, and American freedom.