Our War for Democracy. The Avar in which we are engaged for the main- tenance of our free institutions, not only gives dignity and interest to these present days, but throws back its light upon the past. For, recog- nizing that this Avar is a legacy to us from the past, tho natural result and necossary issue of the errors and sins of former generations, as well as of our own, the intelligence with which we study history is quickened, and the sense of the intimate indissoluble moral relation of mankind from age to age vastly enlarged. Nor is this all. The heroic actions of men in olden times revive in modern deeds* Plutarch's characters become our cotemporaries. The knights of chivalry are comrades of the brave soldiers Avho fight for the Stars and Stripe 3. The Good Old Cause of the Commonwealth of England, is the Good Old Cause of our grander commonwealth. Sidney and Sir John Eliot are not mere examples to the youth of our day. We have our ruder Bayards. Milton is the defender of our liberties. The songs sung for freedom in other days inspire our hearts, and the blows struck for Justice and Right in all past wars echo in tho roar of our cannon, and flash in the stroke of our swords. But our war is greatly distinguished above all the popular wars that have preceded it, in being more truly democratic. In its origin, a war for the deience of republican institutions, it has proved itself to be a war of classes —of a Democ- racy against an aristocracy. Its course has groAvn more direct as the principles involved in this struggle have become more clearly apparent. A man hits hard in defence of his own rights; and the people have begun to see that this war is not for the Union alone, not to save the government alone, but to save their OAvn most sacred rights and most valued privileges. It is a war of the people, for tho people. " We, the people," found- ed this Republic ; and We, the people, will main- tain it. For the first time in the history of the world, a government was established professedly on a foundation of right. All other governments rested upon a force or privilege. Ours, was to secure the liberty and equality of all. But though the foundation was thus solidly and nobly laid, the superstructure has not fully answered to the original design. Our institutions failed to correspond to our professions of principle. Our government became as ifit too had rested upon force and privilege. Liberty came to mean, not the liberty of all, but of a class. Equality was Interpreted as being not an inalienable right of men, but a possession of certain privileges by a portion of mankind. It was declared that there were classes of men who had no rights that other classes 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, the pernicious doctrine of liberty, the pestilent no- tion of equality, the foolish regard for abstract rights. 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 matter of circumstances. The North —a democracy— said: Abandonthenewbadpracticos. Holdfast to the old principles. Men have inalienable rights 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, the people, the rights of men. The North, on the other hand, fighting to mantain and extend lib- erty, to make men equal, to secure honor and opportunity, and his rights, to every man. There is no half-way ground for the North. We, the people, if we would secure justice for ourselves, must secure it for all alike. We cannot figbty for our own liberty, unless we fight for that of all the rest of men. We have no political rights that othor men have not an equal claim to. We are finishing what our fathers began. The prin- ciples which thoy asserted, wo Vielieve in, ami are carrying into fulfilment. "We, the people," moan as our fathers did, " to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, insure domestic tran- quility, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity,"—and we mean to do this more certainly than our fathers did; for while they meant by " We, tho people," only a part 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 of becoming, and are then only secure, when under them every man is certain of liberty and of jus- tice; and when every man shall acknowledge that every other man has rights that he is bound to respect. We may yet have to fight long before we come to this peace ; for we shall have to fight, not only the armies of the South, but its ignorance, and all its allies at the North. But the end, though distant, is in view.—Charles Eliot Norton. m i > \u25a0 Yorktown of to-day is so little like York- town as it was, that neither General Cornwallis nor the modern tools of tyranny, Jeff. Davis' Hessians could recognize the place. Some of the old landmarks still remain, such as the broad York river below, the buildings once the headquarters of General Cornwallis, a few little insignificant mounds of earth, once the fortifica- tions of the British, &c. The fortifications built by the rebels have almost vanished by the im- provements made by Uncle Sam's boys. Gen- eral McClellan's approaches are still as good as ever—w r hile 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 suppliant knee to the freemen of the Colonies, and here, too, the Southrons found the place too hot for them, and fled before the banners of the free. — Two small poplar trees mark the spot Avhere Washington met General Cornwallis, An en- closure which surrounded it until a few years ago has been carried away by curious visitors, piece after piece, so that now only its trees re- main ; and already have tho people commenced to cut pieces of bark out of these. —Cor, Cleveland Herald. m » _ General Logan's recent expedition into Ala- bama disclosed some facts of considerable im- portance. " Almost the entire population of that section of Alabama through which it passed, and for miles about it, is honestly, intensely loy- al. Officers who wore in East Tennessee say that the loyalty of that part of Alabama is as genuine as any they obtained knowledge of in East Tennessee. There is no whining about slavory, and abolitionists, no Mfs' or 'buts'; they are for the old Union. Men Avho had lived in 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 brown paper with a pencil, borrowed arms, and actu- ally went 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 writing a series of articles for the Christian Watchman and Reflec- tor on "Men of Our Times." For the issue of that paper, of January 7th, she speaks as follows of President Lincoln: "Little did tho convention that nominated Abraham Lincoln for President know what they were doing. Little did the honest, fatherly, pa- triotic man, who stood in hiH simplicity on the platform at Springfield, asking tho prayers of his townsmen, and receiving their pledges to ro- member him, foresee how awfully Ue was to need those prayers, the prayers of all the nation, and the prayers of all the working, suffering, com- mon people throughout the world. God's hand was upon him with a visible protection, saving first from the danger of assassination at Balti- more, and bringing him safely to our national Capital. " Lincoln is a strong man, but hi-s strength is of a peculiar kind : it is not agressi ye so much as passive, and among passive things it is like the strength not so much of SStone buttress, as of a wire cable. It is strength swaying to every influence, yielding on this side and on that to popular needs yet tenaciously and inflexibly bound to carry its great end ; and probably by no other kind of strength could our national ship have been drawn thus far during the tossings and 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 radical abolitionists and conservatives, he has listened to all, weighed tho words of all, waited, observed, yielded now here and there; taut, in the main, kept one inflexible, honest purpose, and drawn the national ship through. "In times of our trouble Abraham Lincoln has had his turn of being the best abused man of our nation. Like Moses leading his Israel through the wilderness, he has seen the day when every man seemed ready to stone him, and, yet, with simple, wiry, steady perseverance he has held on conscious of honest intentions, and looking to God for help. All the nation have felt, in the increasing solemnity of his Proclamation and papers, how deep an education was being wrought 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 of Mr. Lincoln has been as much advanced abroad by his late acts as in the United States. His main tenanco of the act of Emancipation in his An' : nual Message has given immense satisfaction to all those not prejudiced by special reasons for the rebellion, and his sagacity, straightforward- ness and honesty in the midst of such confusion and excitement, called from M, Loubelaye the other day at the College de France, before an im- mense audience of the elite of the intellectual world, the exclamation, that Mr. Lincoln was a "greater man than Csosar J" So, too, I heard a leading French politician say lately: " You Americans don't appreciate Mr. Lincoln at his proper value. No monarch in Europe could car- ry on such a colossal war in front while harassed by 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 the people and not the President who carry on the war. The personal compliment paid to Mr. Lin- coln in the above remark is, however, none the less valuable, and on every side I hear people begin to say that Mr. Lincoln will merit more than a biography—he willmerit a history,— Parii Cor. N. Y. Times.