concise, and to the point, he effectually canvassed the State. They are
addressed to thinking men everywhere. Free from all trickery, strictly
impartial, relying entirely upon the soundness of his premises for
success,--for elegance of diction he had not, and he was too honest even
to become a sophist,--these papers manifest at once the true patriot and
the intelligent man. Thousands of adherents the Republican cause had in
1860, but not one more indefatigable or more heartily in earnest than
Lyon. Outside the limits of party interests, and uninfluenced personally
by the predominance of either faction, he had worked out in his own way
the problem of national life, and now spread its solution before his
readers. 'Our cause,' said he, 'is to honor labor and elevate the
laborer.' Here we have the kernel of the whole matter; the spirit, if
not the letter, of the whole republican system of government. The secret
that philosophers have elaborated from the unconquerable facts of
physics, ethics, and psychology, that men of genius have evolved with
infinite difficulty from the mass of crude aesthetic associations that
cluster around every object of nature or of art, Lyon, working and
thinking alone as a citizen, has discovered, with the sole aid of common
sense and the habit of practical observation. Carey and Godwin have
proved by statistics for unbelievers the reasonableness of the doctrine
enunciated by Lyon. Now, thanks to the untiring efforts of a few
stout-hearted patriots, it is no new one to the North; but in the late
presidential contest it was a strange weapon glittering in strong hands.
Our society, diluted and weakened by the Southern element, revolted at
first from the creed that is to prove its salvation. Not alone in our
border States had the dragon crept, searing our fair institutions with
his hot breath, but even upon the sturdy old Puritan stock were
engrafted many of the petty notions that pass for 'principles' in Dixie.
True, we were educated, all of us, into a sort of decent regard for the
good old element of labor,--we call it industry,--more antique, since