The measures advocated by the one party, and resisted by
the other, through a long series of years, have now ceased to be the
pivots on which the election turns. The prominent statesmen, so long
identified with those measures, will henceforth relinquish their
controlling influence over public affairs. Both parties, it may likewise
be said, are united in one common purpose,--that of preserving our sacred
Union, as the immovable basis from which the destinies, not of America
alone, but of mankind at large, may be carried upward and consummated.
And thus men stand together, in unwonted quiet and harmony, awaiting the
new movement in advance which all these tokens indicate.
It remains for the citizens of this great country to decide, within the
next few weeks, whether they will retard the steps of human progress by
placing at its head an illustrious soldier, indeed, a patriot, and one
indelibly stamped into the history of the past, but who has already done
his work, and has not in him the spirit of the present or of the coming
time; or whether they will put their trust in a new man, whom a life of
energy and various activity has tested, but not worn out, and advance
with him into the auspicious epoch upon which we are about to enter.
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