And now, what is your and my duty in the premises? Is it to sit with folded hands and see our glorious republic drift on and on until it falls into the hands of the Democratic party, and then into the hands of European sovereigns, and then is blotted out in one eternal night? Or shall we not rather (as Gough so graphically pictures in one of his inimitable lectures) cry aloud to those whom we see carelessly sailing on the river of Time--the Niagara River,--only a little way above the rapids, and within plain hearing of the thundering of the all-devouring falls--"Young men, ahoy there; the rapids are below you!" And if they should at first respond with a "Ha! ha! we will laugh and quaff; all things delight us; what care we for the future?"--then to cry again, still louder than before, "Beware! Beware! The rapids are below you!" and if, after all this, they still go shrieking, howling, blaspheming over the falls of the river of Time, your skirts and mine will be free of their blood.
Or, to change the metaphor, my friend, let you and I and all of us who love a representative form of government, who love the freedom of the press, who love our own glorious republic--let us, whenever we see the "ship of state" floundering in the breakers and liable to be engulphed by the angry waves of passion, hate, and self-interest, imitate the example of our blessed Saviour, and cry aloud, "Peace; be still!" and though we may not, like Him, calm the waves by miraculous power, yet, if with our cry we put our shoulders firmly together, and pull at the same end of the rope, all of us who really love the republic--the honest Democrat with the honest Republican, the honest Catholic with the honest Protestant--we and our descendants may save the "ship of state" from sinking, at least for many years, if not for many centuries to come. And may God bless and prosper every such united effort for the saving of our glorious republic!
End of Project Gutenberg's Secrets of the Late Rebellion, by J. R. Freese