Our War for Democracy.The Avar in which we are engaged for the main-

tenance of our free institutions, not only givesdignity and interest to these present days, butthrows back its light upon the past. For, recog-nizing that this Avar is a legacy to us from thepast, tho natural result and necossary issue ofthe errors and sins of former generations, as wellas of our own, the intelligence with which westudy history is quickened, and the sense of theintimate indissoluble moral relation of mankindfrom age to age vastly enlarged. Nor is this all.The heroic actions of men in olden times revivein modern deeds* Plutarch's characters becomeour cotemporaries. The knights of chivalry arecomrades of the brave soldiers Avho fight for theStars and Stripe3. The Good Old Cause of theCommonwealth of England, is the Good OldCause of our grander commonwealth. Sidneyand Sir John Eliot are not mere examples to theyouth of our day. We have our ruder Bayards.Milton is the defender of our liberties. Thesongs sung for freedom in other days inspire ourhearts, and the blows struck for Justice andRight in all past wars echo in tho roar of ourcannon, and flash in the stroke of our swords.

But our war is greatly distinguished above allthe popular wars that have preceded it, in beingmore truly democratic. In its origin, a war forthe deience of republican institutions, it hasproved itself to be a war of classes —of a Democ-racy against an aristocracy. Its course has groAvnmore direct as the principles involved in thisstruggle have become more clearly apparent. Aman hits hard in defence of his own rights; andthe people have begun to see that this war is notfor the Union alone, not to save the governmentalone, but to save their OAvn most sacred rightsand most valued privileges. It is a war of thepeople, for tho people. " We, the people," found-ed this Republic ; and We, the people, willmain-tain it. For the first time in the history of theworld, a government was established professedlyona foundation of right. Allother governmentsrested upon a force or privilege. Ours, was tosecure the liberty and equality of all. Butthough the foundation was thus solidly and noblylaid, the superstructure has not fully answeredto the original design. Our institutions failed tocorrespond to our professions of principle. Ourgovernment became as ifit too had rested uponforce and privilege. Liberty came to mean, notthe liberty of all, but of a class. Equality was

Interpreted as being not an inalienable right ofmen, but a possession of certain privileges by a

portion of mankind. It was declared that therewere classes of men who had no rights that otherclasses were bound to respect. So far had our

practice departed from our principles.At last the time came Avhen one or the other

was to be abandoned. The South —an aristocra-cy—said : Abandon the old false principles, thepernicious doctrine of liberty, the pestilent no-tion of equality, the foolish regard for abstractrights. The few haA'e an absolute right to gov-ern the many. Laborers must labor for others.Money, political power, social advantages, bo-long to the governing class. Justice is a matterof circumstances. The North—a democracy—said: Abandonthenewbadpracticos. Holdfastto the old principles. Men have inalienablerights to liberty, to equality. Justice is eternal,universal, immutable.

So came the war. The South, on the one hand,fighting against tho Government, the Union, thepeople, the rights of men. The North, on theother hand, fighting to mantain and extend lib-erty, to make men equal, to secure honor and

opportunity, and his rights, toevery man. Thereis no half-way ground for the North. We, thepeople, ifwe would secure justice for ourselves,must secure it for all alike. We cannot figbtyforour own liberty, unless we fight for that of allthe rest of men. We have no political rightsthat othor men have not an equal claim to. Weare finishing what our fathers began. The prin-ciples which thoy asserted, wo Vielieve in, ami arecarrying into fulfilment. "We, the people,"moan as our fathers did, " to form a more perfectUnion, establish justice, insure domestic tran-quility, and secure the blessings of liberty toourselves and our posterity,"—and we mean todo this more certainly than our fathers did; forwhile they meant by " We, tho people," only apart of the people, we mean by it the whole —white and black, native and foreign—for our in-stitutions are then only what they are capable ofbecoming, and are then only secure, when underthem every man is certain of liberty and of jus-tice; and when every man shall acknowledgethat every other man has rights that he is boundto respect.

We may yet have to fight long before we cometo this peace ; forwe shall have to fight, not onlythe armies of the South, but its ignorance, andall its allies at the North. But the end, though

distant, is in view.—Charles Eliot Norton.mi > \u25a0

Yorktown of to-day is so little like York-town as it was, that neither General Cornwallisnor the modern tools of tyranny, Jeff. Davis'Hessians could recognize the place. Some ofthe old landmarks still remain, such as thebroad York river below, the buildings once theheadquarters of General Cornwallis, a few littleinsignificant mounds of earth, once the fortifica-tions of the British, &c. The fortifications builtby the rebels have almost vanished by the im-provements made by Uncle Sam's boys. Gen-eral McClellan's approaches are still as good asever—wrhile those of General Washington can

scarcely he discerned. What volumes of re-buke to tyrants the history of this place con-tains. Here proud Britain bent her suppliantknee to the freemen of the Colonies, and here,too, the Southrons found the place too hot forthem, and fled before the banners of the free. —Two small poplar trees mark the spot AvhereWashington met General Cornwallis, An en-closure which surrounded it until a few yearsago has been carried away by curious visitors,piece after piece, so that now only its trees re-main ; and already have tho people commencedto cut pieces of bark out of these. —Cor, ClevelandHerald.

m »_

General Logan's recent expedition into Ala-bama disclosed some facts of considerable im-portance. " Almost the entire population ofthat section ofAlabama through which it passed,and for miles about it, is honestly, intensely loy-al. Officers who wore in East Tennessee saythat the loyalty of that part of Alabama is asgenuine as any they obtained knowledge of inEast Tennessee. There is no whining aboutslavory, and abolitionists, no Mfs' or 'buts';they are for the old Union. Men Avho had livedin the mountains tAvo years to avoid rebel serv-ice, came in and asked to be mustered as sol-diers in tho federal army. One Alabamian, Mo-Curdy, during the expedition, made up a com-pany, enrolled their names on a piece of brownpaper with a pencil, borrowed arms, and actu-allywent out with his men and captured a com-pany of bushwhackers, called home-guards, and |brought them into our camp,

Abraham Lincoln.Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe is writinga series

ofarticles for the Christian Watchman and Reflec-tor on "Men of Our Times." For the issue ofthat paper, of January 7th, she speaks as followsof President Lincoln:

"Little did tho convention that nominatedAbraham Lincoln forPresident know what theywere doing. Little did the honest, fatherly, pa-triotic man, who stood in hiH simplicity on theplatform at Springfield, asking tho prayers ofhistownsmen, and receiving their pledges to ro-member him, foresee how awfully Ue was to needthose prayers, the prayers of all the nation, andthe prayers of all the working, suffering, com-mon people throughout the world. God's handwas upon him with a visible protection, savingfirstfrom the danger of assassination at Balti-more, and bringing him safely to our nationalCapital.

" Lincoln is a strong man, but hi-s strength isofa peculiar kind : it is not agressi ye so muchas passive, and among passive things it is likethe strength not so much of SStone buttress, asofa wire cable. It is strength swaying to everyinfluence, yielding on this side and on that topopular needs yet tenaciously and inflexiblybound to carry its great end ; and probably byno other kind ofstrength could our national shiphave been drawn thus far during the tossingsand tempests Avhich beset her way.

"Surrounded by all sorts of conflicting claims,by traitors, by half-hearted, timid men, by bor-der State men, and free State men, by radicalabolitionists and conservatives, he has listenedto all, weighed tho words ofall, waited, observed,yielded now here and there; taut, in the main,

kept one inflexible, honest purpose, and drawnthe national ship through.

"In times ofour trouble Abraham Lincoln hashad his turn of being the best abused man of ournation. Like Moses leading his Israel throughthe wilderness, he has seen the day when everyman seemed ready to stone him, and, yet, withsimple, wiry, steady perseverance he has heldon conscious of honest intentions, and lookingto God for help. All the nation have felt, in theincreasing solemnity of his Proclamation andpapers, how deep an education was beingwrought in his mind by this simple faith in God.the Ruler of nations, and this humble willing-ness to learn tho awful lesson of His Provi-dence."

Mr. Lincoln Abroad. —The popularity ofMr.Lincoln has been as much advanced abroad byhis late acts as in the United States. His maintenanco of the act of Emancipation in his An':nual Message has given immense satisfaction to

all those not prejudiced by special reasons forthe rebellion, and his sagacity, straightforward-ness and honesty in the midst of such confusionand excitement, called from M, Loubelaye theother day at the College de France, before an im-mense audience of the elite of the intellectualworld, the exclamation, that Mr. Lincoln was a"greater man than Csosar J" So, too, Iheard aleading French politician say lately: " YouAmericans don't appreciate Mr. Lincoln at hisproper value. No monarch in Europe could car-ry on such a colossal war infront while harassedby so many factions and fault-finders behind.—No, you don't give him his duo." From a Euro-pean point of view the merit of Mr. Lincoln is,in effect, immense; but in a Republic it is thepeople and not the President who carry on thewar. The personal compliment paid to Mr. Lin-coln in the above remark is, however, none theless valuable, and on every side Ihear peoplebegin to say that Mr. Lincoln will merit morethan a biography—he willmerit a history,— PariiCor. N. Y. Times.