Such is our situation, and such are our prospects. Happiness is ours if we have the will to seize the occasion and make it our own. It appears to me there is still a choice left to the United States of America. It depends upon their conduct whether they will be respectable and prosperous, or miserable as a Nation. This is the time of their political probation. This is the moment when the eyes of the whole World are turned upon them. This is the moment to establish or ruin their national Character forever. This is the favorable moment to give strength to our Federal Government, or this may be the ill-fated moment for weakening the Union and exposing us to the schemes of European powers, which may play one State against another to serve their own purposes. According to the choices the States make at this moment, they will stand or fall. It is yet to be decided whether the Revolution must ultimately be considered as a blessing or a curse: a blessing or a curse, not to the present age alone, for with our fate will the destiny of unborn millions be involved.
