If any young man is about to commence the world, we say to him, publicly and privately, Go to the West.
The illusion that times that were are better than those that are, has probably pervaded all ages.
My leading idea was the establishment of a journal removed alike from servile partisanship on the one hand and from gagged, mincing neutrality on the other.
The masses of our countrymen, North and South, are eager to clasp hands across the bloody chasm which has so long divided them.
The Republic needed to be passed through chastening, purifying fires of adversity and suffering: so these came and did their work and the verdure of a new national life springs greenly, luxuriantly, from their ashes.