Dodgeville Chronicle

A Hopeful Future,

It is the habit of many to see only an abyss of difficulties in the future. Even if the victory of the nation is assured, they believe that we are to walk through a Golgotha. That there are difficulties no man can deny. That they will tax the wisdom, patience and patriotism of our rulers and people is unquestionable. But a free and intelligent people, in a right cause, inspired by moral convictions, will solve difficulties as they meet them with inevitable certainty. A free people like ours will be found adequate to all their emergencies. With us, Government is but the right hand of Society. Free society, such as that developed in America, under Christian and Republican institutions, will have a practical wisdom and an administrative power such as can be found under no other civil training. We are not afraid to place American ideas and institutions before the intelligent men of the world for trial, for their power of developing a people-for their singular and, to foreign eyes, unexpected developments under a wonderful and trying civil war. And we are just as willing to risk the future. That God who guided the fathers, has guided the children, and will continue to lead. It is the inherent agreement of American ideas and institutions with the spirit of the Gospel, and the great ends to which Providence has pointed for thousands of years, that gives us unwavering assurance.

It is not so much our thought now, whether we succeed, as it is that our success shall be so used as to give the world new assurance of the benefit of popular liberty, and new illustrations of a divine power in human affairs. The year before us is to be one of labor, education, salutary reforms, and revivals of religion, pure and undefiled. The wastes of war and the disturbance of moral forces will be followed, we fervently believe, by great and general outpouring of the Spirit of God upon the churches of the community. The next twenty years will be memorable as the most remarkable of any in American annals for moral progress. The night is far spent; and the day is at hand. Let men rejoice and give thanks! Independent.