Excerpt from The Real Issues of the Canvass: Or, the Need of New Men and New Measures; An Address The Civil War, and the Constitutional Amendments it ren dered necessary, closed a great era in our politics - that which grew out of the existence of slavery. The distinction of that era will be, that it determined the perpetuity of the Union it emancipated and enfranchised the slaves, and it ordained that the debts incurred in the prosecution of these ends should be for ever sacred, while the debts incurred in resisting them should be for ever invalid. This great consummation having been accepted and approved by all parties, the questions it involved are taken out of the list of party questions, and are become landmarks of history. Whether wisely or unwisely settled, they are settled, and the nation passes on to other issues. There would be no such thing as progress in politics, it we did not admit what certain English statesmen used to call Finality. If, when a question has been fully debated and decided by the people, it can not be dismissed, our discussions would run, like mill-horses, a sterile and wearisome round, leading in the end to mere idiotic iteration and babble. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.