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Saturday, November 29.
The whirlwind of passion and excitement, which swept over the country north and south at the beginning of the war, is now a thing of the past; and that intense feeling of sectional hatred which followed, and which has characterized the war hitherto in so striking a manner, appears at last to be subsiding. Hitherto every possible means have been resorted to in both sections to inflame the minds of the people against each other; and that unnatural spirit of extermination which ever characterizes civil war pervaded the minds of all classes, from the highest to the lowest. Newspapers have teemed with false and incendiary articles unfit to be published among a Christian people. The most opprobrious epithets knows to the English language have been applied by the people of one section to those of the other. The people of the one have been taught that those of the other had suddenly ceased to be men and women like themselves. — Each party, as the fortunes of war happened to turn, have alternately feasted and fasted in answer to what seemed to be the smiles and frowns of Heaven, but never omitting to invoke the vengeance and wrath of their common Creator upon the other. The sons of Clay and Webster have been arrayed against each other. The descendants of Washington and Jackson on the one side, and those of Adams and Hancock upon the other, have met in deadly conflict upon the field of battle. — Douglas and Stevens, and Bell and Everett have each respectively urged his neighbors to meet those of the other at the point of the bayonet.
Foreign nations, jealous of the power and prowess of the American people, have looked upon the strife with self-complacency and ill-disguised delight. The British ministry prefer the support of millions of government paupers by an addition burden upon the Queen's tax-ridden subjects to a termination of the suicidal conflict. But people have had time to reflect, and now seem almost ready to reason together. — Some of the hitherto leading war journals both north and south, now, in a timid and cautious manner, venture to discuss the policy of peace; and here and there a leading man submits a plan or basis upon which the States may, with honor to themselves and to each other, resume friendly relations. The popular mind seems disposed to turn from the darkness of war to the light of peace.
The telegraph informs us that a great national convention has been called to meet at Pittsburgh on the 8th, of January. — Whether this dispatch is reliable or not we cannot say, but it seems that the dismal season of war is drawing to a close. The people once again begin to reflect that we are all still Americans, and revere the names of Washington and Jefferson, and are still, as firmly as ever, attached to the great principles of self-government taught us by these illustrious men, and that we are able and willing to carry out these great principles, by settling and adjusting all matters of State as statesmen, not as barbarians. Each section has become convinced of the gallantry and bravery of the other. As soldiers each have won the respects of their opponents — having proven themselves, with few exceptions, heroes in war, who fight as only Americans can fight. The American soldier and citizen is the same hardy, courageous, generous and warm-hearted freeman whether he be found in the north or in the south. The people begin to reflect that they are not a nation of outlaws and savages — one half traitors and the other half vandals and murderers bent upon the subjugation and extermination of their own countrymen.
Let the people be once released from this cruel conflict among themselves and there will be a re-union of the north and south sincere, cordial and earnest.