Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1865, By FRANKLIN B. HOUGH, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States, for the Northern District of New York. OF THE QUARTOS 6 ARE ON WHATMAN'S DRAWING PAFER. PREFACE. The councils of WASHINGTON are the inheritance of the American People, and the example of his life will be the model of greatness, and the measure of perfection in all coming time. In the changing destinies of the Republic, and under every aspect of its fortunes; while reposing in profound peace, and unlimited prosperity, as when shaken by party strife or threatened with foreign war, the precepts of our illustrious First President have been remembered and felt, their spirit has been grafted upon our policy, and the age succeeding that in which he lived, has been educated in the principles which they impart. But, within the Nation that to the external view presented an aspect of unity, and which actually possessed all the elements of power, there lurked a principle of weakness-engrafted upon our colonial system by an insult to humanity, and accepted by the founders of the free government as an evil to be endured until it could be removed. This continued to exist as a source of danger to our Civil Liberty. It laid the foundation of an aristocracy that tyrannized over the aspirations of free labor, and cherished a habit of despotism in opinions and measures which by uniting factions, at length acquired a power of terrible energy and of most dangerous purpose. After a long course of preparation, the elements of dissolution were matured, and developed in a civil war, which rapidly brought vast armies into conflict, and placed at issue before the world the momentous question, as to whether a popular government, having acquired its independence, and proved its power of resisting foreign aggression, possessed after all the ability of maintaining itself against internal discord and sectional wars. It was during the darkest period of this melancholy epoch, and at a time when the keenest foresight of coming events presented no ray of confidence but that inspired by a reliance upon Divine justice, and a well-grounded belief in the patriotism and resources of the loyal sections, that the thought occurred of turning back the pages of our national history to a time when our people were united in heart and interest as one, and perchance to find some precedent or principle that |