Belmont Chronicle

The Fourth of July, 1865.
[From Harper's Weekly]

Once more the flag of the United States floats supreme over every inch of its rightful domain, from the pine hills of Maine to the palm shores of the Gulf, and from one ocean to the other. Four years ago it fell at Fort Sumter upon a startled people doubting if they were a nation. It rises again over the strongest nation upon the globe. The great national festival returns, and will be hailed as never before. Eloquence and song and solemn popular enthusiasm will consecrate the memorable day.— The bells and the cannon of a continent will salute its happy sunrise and evening; and the universal public and private prayer of all true hearts will be, God bless and preserve the United States of America!

Eighty nine years ago our fathers declared a popular government to be practicable. They asserted that such a government would be adequate to every emergency, signally prosperous in peace, and invincible against treason or foreign war.— Favored by every felicitous influence of situation, of climate, and of moderate population, the great experiment began. That it was an experiment the Old World insisted. That with a kind climate and sparse population it might work well so long as there was peace, was contemptuously conceded. But that it would yield to the first serious pressure, and disappear in war, was haughtily asserted.

It was called an experiment, and it was more so than was believed. It claimed to be a trial of the principle of popular government, but it was not a fair trial. Thoughtful men early saw that if it failed, the failure was not of a truly popular system, but of one vitiated by a partial but absolute denial of the popular principle. If, on the other hand, it succeeded, its success would be the sublimest proof of the enduring character of such a government, and a final vindication of a wise faith in man.

The hour of trial came. It came under a cloud of circumstances apparently fatal to the system. It came as disease comes to a poisoned frame. "The bubble has burst!" cried those who had sneered. "God save the People!" prayed those who had believed. And as a ship strains and bends against the thunder and shock of mingled tempest and ocean, so with sure persistence, with unquailing courage, with unwavering faith, giving their time, their money, their heart's-blood, the people breasted the combined and prolonged fury of anarchy and despotism, and triumphed. To-day they stand erect and victorious under the perfect rainbow of the departing storm, and that bow is the promise of peace to mankind.

'The experiment is complete. The popular principle has been found sufficient to suppress an unprecedented rebellion at home and to avoid foreign interference; and it has done this without losing its essence or its form. A vast volunteer army of citizens—a formidable navy built and manned in the very stress of war—an enormous loan taken by the people—these have been the means, with no arbitrary measures but such as the Constitution itself contemplated and provided—by which this result has been achieved. And that the spectacle might want no essential element, the labor was accomplished under the leadership of a man whose purity of life and sublime simplicity of genius, added to his profound faith in liberty and entire reliance upon law, made him the characteristic representative of the American people and of republican institutions. In the bright garland of the rejoicing festival a leaf of rue will be woven in tender memory of him nor will any orator forget to mingle the name of Lincoln with his celebration of the national unity and liberty which the stout heart and the strong arm of the people have maintained.

We have a right to rejoice as never before—for we have now the authority of experience to believe that every question within the nation will be wisely settled by the same popular good sense and patient heroism which has saved the nation.