Passaic City Record

Everywhere, East and West, yes, and South also, the Nation's stupendous growth is closely connected with the deeds of the country's Union soldiers. The phrase "since the war" is more than a chronological expression.

It marks an era of development. The two periods of our history are as clearly divided as are the waters of the pellucid Mississippi and the muddy Missouri for many miles below the junction of the great rivers. No sooner had the country taken breath after the gigantic task of crushing the rebellion, than it began a career of unparalleled prosperity. It exhibited a vitality, a vigor, an enterprise, a self-consciousness of manifest destiny unknown before. The reason was that the two millstones of slavery and disunion were finally and forever thrown from the national wreck. And for this deliverance the foremost thanks are due, unto God, to the men, and the comrades, living and dead, of the men who marched 40,000 strong, through Boston's streets on Tuesday of last week.