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WAR 
 
 THE ONLY MEANS OF 
 
 PRESERVING OUR NATIONALITY. 
 
 AN ORATION, 
 
 DELIVERED AT SAN JOSE, SANTA CLARA COUNTY, CAL. 
 
 JULY 4, 1864, 
 
 BY 
 
 GEORGE BARSTOW. 
 
 SAN FRANCISCO: 
 
 PRINTED BY TOWNE & BACON, BOOK AND JOB PRINTERS. 
 
 18 6 4. 
 
WAR 
 
 THE ONLY MEANS OF 
 
 PRESERVING OUR NATIONALITY. 
 
 AN ORATION, 
 
 DELIVERED AT SAN JOSE, SANTA CLARA COUNTY, CAL. 
 
 JULY 4, 1864, 
 
 BT 
 
 GEORGE BARSTOW. 
 
 SAN FRANCISCO: 
 
 PRINTED BY TOWNE & BACON, BOOK AND JOB PRINTERS. 
 
 1864. 
 
,34 
 
ORATION 
 
 After the example of our fathers, the illustrious founders of the 
 Republic, let us turn our thoughts to war, as the only means of 
 preserving that liberty which was born in '76. 
 
 It is clear that the problem of the rebellion must be solved by 
 the sword. It is the patriotic resolve of the people of the United 
 States to contend, in spite of every sacrifice, for the maintenance 
 of that noble Government which embodies the hopes of the free 
 throughout the civilized world. 
 
 Of all the spectacles presented to our view, through the telescope 
 of history, there is none so sublime as that of a great nation con- 
 tending for its existence, against foes who act upon the atrocious 
 maxim that success in villainy is a justification of it. That specta- 
 cle is actually presented to our own eyes by this Republic, and 
 while thousands are expecting every day to see the national credit 
 perch upon the standard of victory, and are disappointed if they do 
 not, and are alarmed at the national debt and the fluctuations in the 
 currency ; and Avhile the timid are beginning to despond, and the 
 disaffected to murmur, and even the patriotic to have misgivings, it 
 is instructive to turn and see what other nations have done, and 
 then by comparing ourselves with them to ask if what man has 
 done man may not do. Thus by a view of other nations we shall 
 see that this Republic has not put forth a tenth of her strength nor 
 a tenth of her endurance ; and that tenfold greater burdens of war 
 have been laid upon other nations, and those nations have triumphed 
 over them, and renewed their strength like the eagle. 
 
 By the common consent of nations, the United States rank 
 
as one of the four great powers of the earth ; the other three 
 being England, France, and Russia. Let us raise the veil and 
 institute a comparison of nations. We shall find that the re- 
 sources of a vigorous people are increased by the necessity that 
 calls them forth. We shall find that a mighty nation, profoundly 
 engaged in the arts of peace, is slow to take on armor, and will be 
 uniformly defeated in the beginning of a war, and as uniformly 
 successful at last. We may infer that this will be especially so with 
 the people of the Northern States, because their works of peace 
 have been so grand and so absorbing. But as the contest goes on, 
 they will bend at last to war the same energies which have spread 
 the triumphs of their commerce from the equator to the poles ; and 
 then victory will crown their efforts ; but not in a day, nor a year ; 
 for they cannot come out at once from the harvests of peace and 
 descend to the harvest of death. They will always be the last to go 
 out upon the war path ; but being out, they will not be the first to 
 come back. We shall find, also, that whenever a nation is driven 
 to the ordeal of battle, if it fails to stand the test, its glories must 
 end. Let us see how these positions are supported by history. 
 
 England commenced her great contest with France on the third 
 day of February, 1793, thirteen days after the execution of Louis 
 XVI, and closed it on the seventh of July, 1815, when the victo- 
 rious armies of the allies, headed by Wellington, entered Paris in 
 triumph. They came from the field of Waterloo. Thus, with 
 trifling intervals of peace, England waged war twenty- two years. 
 It has assumed the name of " the twenty years' war." Every 
 student of history knows that during this whole period England 
 kept her foes off from her own soil, and was all the time growing 
 rich. There is no reason why the same cannot be done in our own 
 country. 
 
 But let us see how England multiplied her resources and re- 
 doubled her efforts. The year 1793 was the first year of the war, 
 and the revenue raised for that year, by tax and loan, was a little 
 over twenty-four millions sterling. By land, she had forty-six thou- 
 sand men in arms in Europe, and ten thousand in Asia. At sea, 
 she had in commission eighty-five ships of the line. The contest 
 rolled on, and year by year the power of the nation rose. In 1813, 
 after she had been at war over nineteen years, she raised by direct 
 
taxation twenty millions sterling, by indirect taxation forty millions 
 more, and borrowed thirty-nine millions at a fraction over five 
 per cent, interest. She had eight hundred thousand men upon 
 a war footing in Europe, and two hundred thousand in Asia, and 
 they were most of them volunteers. One thousand and three sliips of 
 war bore the cross of St. George. She had two hundred and thirty- 
 one ships of the line in service, and she sent a hundred thousand men 
 upon the continent and supported them there, and was all the while 
 lending money to her allies. She at the same time kept up her 
 sinking fund to over fifteen millions, and expended annually six 
 millions for the support of the poor. For convenience of estimat- 
 ing in round numbers, we may call a pound sterling, five dollars. 
 Multiplying each of these numbers by five and adding all, we get 
 with sufficient exactness the stupendous aggregate of these ex- 
 penditures. In the first year of the war, they were one hundred 
 and twenty millions of dollars, and in the nineteenth, six hundred 
 and ninty-five millions, or nearly two millions per day. In 1815, 
 two years later, when England nerved herself for a final struggle, 
 she showed no sign of exhaustion. Parliament voted that year, to 
 the navy eighteen millions sterling, to the army twenty-four millions 
 sterling, and for ordnance extraordinary, three millions eight hun- 
 dred thousand pounds. With these large sums she supported two 
 hundred and seven thousand regular soldiers ; besides, she had 
 enrolled eighty thousand mihtia and three hundred and forty thou- 
 sand local militia, in all, six hundred and fifty thousand warriors ; 
 and she had in commission fifty-eight ships of the line, the largest 
 class of war vessels, besides innumerable smaller ones. She gave 
 away that year enormous subsidies to her allies. 
 
 To Russia £3,241,910 
 
 To Austria 1,790,220 
 
 To Prussia 2,382,823 
 
 To Hanover 206,590 
 
 To Spain 147,333 
 
 To Portugal 100,000 
 
 To Sweden 521,061 
 
 To Italy and the Netherlands 78,152 
 
 To the minor powers 1 ,724,000 
 
 For miscellaneous subsidies 837,134 
 
 In all £11,035,232 
 
The population of great Britain, at that time, did not exceed 
 eighteen millions ; and from this we may see that the people of the 
 United States have hardly yet begun to put forth their strength, 
 either in men or money. England had her reverses in the field 
 and her traitors to contend with at home, as we have, and her 
 grumblers. In 1804, when she had become the acknowledged 
 leader of the allies ; when her expenditures were fifty-three millions 
 sterling ; when she had three hundred thousand men in the field ; 
 when her naval forces numbered one hundred thousand men, with 
 eighty-three ships of the line, and three hundred and forty frigates, 
 and this after ten years of strenuous efforts, and when all must 
 admit that she was waging war in a manner worthy of her great- 
 ness and of her ancient renown ; yet because she sustained great 
 reverses in the field, the murmurs of her malcontents became so 
 loud that a revolution in politics ensued, as complete as if the Union 
 party of the United States should now be defeated at the polls, and 
 on the twelfth of May, in that year, the ministry resigned. But 
 England went forward with open purse, sword in hand, and tri- 
 umphed alike over the disaffected, the traitor, and the foreign foe. 
 England, however, entered upon that war under an enormous 
 load of preexisting debt. We commenced ours almost free from 
 debt. England relied for external revenue upon her commerce 
 and her colonial possessions, some of which were profitable and 
 others not. We have millions of acres of public land, valuable 
 and not yet disposed of. We have undeveloped mines which 
 may surpass the riches of Ophir and Havilah. England had 
 a population of eighteen millions, and in the loyal States we 
 have not much less. England emerged from her long war the 
 richest nation in the world, and with the exception perhaps of Rus- 
 sia, the most powerful. And when we see that she is more than 
 any other a commercial nation, and that during most of this time 
 she was excluded from the commerce of the continent by the Ber- 
 lin and Milan decrees, and yet that she fought thus through a 
 twenty years' war, in the latter part of which she expended from 
 one hundred and ten to one hundred and twenty millions sterling 
 annually, and came out victor, we .naturally ask how she was 
 enabled thus to contend and thus to triumph. By no factitious 
 cause, certainly. The real cause is to be found in her industrial 
 
national character, her free constitution, her long-established habits 
 of industry, and her immense natural advantages, commercial and 
 manufacturing. These prepared the vast means of producing this 
 astonishing result — means which no war could exhaust, so long as 
 it was kept off from her own soil. Most of the advantages which 
 she had, we also possess ; a Government more free than hers, 
 education more general by far, and the same habits of order and 
 industry. We have an agriculture vastly greater than hers — com- 
 mercial and manufacturing advantages hardly less. If we can 
 keep the enemy out of the free States, we can carry on war for 
 forty years, and be richer at the close than at the beginning of it ; 
 richer not in money alone, but in the development of that noble 
 constancy in the government, and that heroic spirit in the people, 
 which makes them surmount difficulties and bear burdens which no 
 other age or country endured, and which earns the applause of the 
 world by pouring out then' blood and their wealth in the cause of 
 mankind. While I detest the conduct of a portion of the English 
 aristocracy in regard to our contest, I honor the prowess and 
 patience of the English people through that tremendous conflict ; 
 and in all history I find few things more admirable than the calm 
 and stubborn resolve of England to conquer or perish. 
 
 Let us now view France, the chief antagonist of England in that 
 war. At the outset we are presented with the astonishing fact that 
 the levies of French soldiers from 1793 to 1813, amounted to more 
 than four millions of men ; and thus they are divided among the 
 years : 
 
 1793 1,500,000 
 
 1798 200,000 
 
 1799 200,000 
 
 1801 30,000 
 
 1805 140,000 
 
 1806 80,000 
 
 1807 80,000 
 
 1808 240,000 
 
 1809 76,000 
 
 1810 160,000 
 
 1811 120,000 
 
 1812 237,000 
 
 1813 1,040,000 
 
 Total 4,103,000 
 
It is true, that some of these levies did not reach the field. But 
 the list of them shows us the amazing efforts by which France 
 confronted the giant power which we have just reviewed. To 
 meet the expenses of these levies, she resorted to the issue of 
 paper money far more freely than we have done. Nor does France 
 or the United States differ in this respect from other nations. In 
 fact, paper money is the currency of all the wars of modern times. 
 The reason is obvious. Sudden calls for provisions, clothing, and 
 munitions of war, sweep the treasury empty, and the nation, not 
 having the money, substitutes its promises. Like an individual, it 
 gives its notes. This is the paper currency of the Government. It 
 is the offspring of necessity. France, a not indifferent beholder of 
 our struggle, carried on her own entirely with a paper currency. 
 On the seventeenth of June, 1790, before a hostile foot had touched 
 her soil, she issued eight hundred millions of assignats, the " green- 
 backs " of France. In 1794, she had fifteen hundred millions 
 afloat, and they were worth but ten cents on the dollar. She at 
 that time subsisted six hundred and thirty-six thousand non-com- 
 batants by rations at the public expense. In 1792, her war tax 
 was graduated so as to produce to the treasury forty millions ster- 
 ling, or two hundred millions of dollars. She had in 1794, four- 
 teen armies in the field, and the expenses of the Avar had risen to 
 forty millions of dollars per month, which is one-and-one-third mill- 
 ions per day, about the same as our own. The only way for 
 the French Government to make headway against these expenses 
 was to issue paper money, and the only basis for it Avas the confis- 
 cated property of the realm, Avhich amounted to thirty-five hundred 
 millions of dollars, and consisted of houses, lands, and movables. 
 The paper had a forced circulation, being payable everywhere, to 
 the Government as well as for it. Towards the close of the year, 
 it sunk to eight-and-one-third cents on the dollar, and the timid sup- 
 posed that national bankruptcy was impending. At that time, 
 however, the victorious banner of Napoleon suddenly appearing on 
 the eastern slopes of the Alps, enabled the French Government to 
 adopt the policy of making war support war, and froin that time 
 France began to live upon her enemies. If Ave ever obtain from 
 victory the power to carry into effect that vigorous system of war- 
 fare, as soon as it is commmenced, we shall be met with a cry from 
 
the Copperheads that it is unconstitutional. But let us not turn 
 aside from the direct course. Constitutions are instruments made 
 for times of peace. In war they are suspended, from the necessity 
 of the case, when they interfere with those military operations 
 which are carried on for their preservation ; and when you hear a 
 man talk of constitutional impediments to the prosecution of this 
 war, you may know that he is a constitutional villain, and if he does 
 not betray his country it will be for want of an opportunity. 
 
 Let us now look at Russia. The first great enemy that the Rus- 
 sians encountered in war was the Swedes under Charles XII. In 
 a series of battles the Russians were defeated and greatly discour- 
 aged. But as they gained in discipline daily, the tide turned at 
 last, and they wound up the contest on the field of Pultowa by the 
 total overthrow of the Swedes and the firm establishment of the 
 Muscovite empire. This was in the year 1700. Let us look at 
 Russia in 1812. In that year Napoleon invaded her at the head 
 of four hundred and fifty thousand men. Never had modern Eu- 
 rope seen such an army, or war on so gigantic a scale. The sabres 
 of forty thousand dragoons met each other and clashed, on the 
 battle field of Smolensko. At Borodino, all along the front of 
 Bagrations' fine, there rose a breastwork of the dead and dying. 
 The conqueror, however, entered Moscow. Yet this tide of disas- 
 ter was so entirely reversed that the French were driven from Mos- 
 cow, and the Cossacks entered Paris. This was not because of the 
 snows of Russia. That it was, is the common opinion, but it is erro- 
 neous. It was because the Russians showed in their very defeats 
 the elements of final success. It was persevering, determined valor, 
 gaining in discipline every day, and showing in this, as in every 
 other case, that an uncorrupted nation suddenly called to arms, is 
 certain to be defeated in the first battles and equally certain to win 
 at last. 
 
 Go back to Hannibal and the Carthaginians. Mark that series of 
 victories which he gained over the Romans, from the day he crossed 
 the Alps till he encamped within sight of Rome ; the conquering 
 Romans losing every battle. Yet this tide was so completely turned 
 that Hannibal was driven out of Italy ; the Carthaginians were 
 everywhere routed, and the Roman general closed the campaign 
 with a battle in which he took twenty thousand prisoners and left 
 
10 
 
 twenty thousand more of the enemies of Rome dead on the field. 
 From that day Carthage was doomed. But I will not multiply illus- 
 trations. The counterparts of Manassas, Great Bethel, Lexington, 
 Leesburg, Fredericksburg, and Petersburg, are found in the history 
 of every warlike nation of ancient or modern times. France, impet- 
 uously gallant, has had many of them. England, the most cautious 
 and firm of warlike nations, has more than one instance in point. 
 Venice, Macedonia, and Turkey, are not wanting in them. 
 
 A single defeat in a pitched battle, or even a series of them, 
 forms no basis for a conclusion as to how great is the capacity of a 
 nation for war. Russia never appeared so great as on the morn- 
 ing when fifteen thousand of her people lay bleeding on the field 
 of Borodino. Rising from defeat, as the embodied spirit of patri- 
 otism, she seized the torch with her own hands, and made her 
 capital a sea of fire. From that hour it was apparent that Russia 
 was invincible. Did Athens ever appear so great as at the 
 moment when her vales were drenched in blood, her fields desola- 
 ted, consternation brooding over her citizens, and her last resource 
 the ships of her merchants ? It was then that the invincible valor 
 of her people, bursting forth like the dayspring from on high, dealt 
 the Persian empire a blow under which it reeled and fell. Was it 
 not after the terrible disaster of Cannae, which brought destruction 
 to the very gates of Rome, that the still uncorrupted Roman roused 
 himself like a giant from sleep and blotted out Carthage ? If any 
 man thinks that courage and endurance will not preserve this 
 nation, let him correct his impressions from the storehouse of history. 
 There he will find, not only that the great sacrifices which courage 
 and endurance impel a nation to make for its life, have been suc- 
 cessful, but that they have always been worth all that they cost. 
 So it will be with us. Ultimately, too, if Ave are true to ourselves, 
 some general will arise, or perhaps has already appeared, capable of 
 pointing out to our brave battalions the road to victory, and of 
 leading the way. Let us not despair of the Republic. It is well 
 with a nation when it can be said of it with truth, that its first 
 efforts in a Avar Avere its least successful ones. 
 
 Looking back over the history of the Avorld, we find that a time 
 has come to almost every nation, Avhen it had to be put to the wager 
 of battle, as a test of its poAvcr to maintain itself in arms. Greece 
 
11 
 
 was put to this test successively at Marathon, at Thermopylae, and 
 at Platea. On each occasion she stood the test, and her glory and 
 power went on increasing. But after a period of debasement, she 
 was again put to the test at Cherronpea, and failed ; and after that 
 her history is a case of melancholy decline. Rome was put to the 
 same test on a score of bloody fields, and as long as she met it 
 successfully, she remained mistress of the world. But the day came 
 when she was put to trial by the same ordeal in the first Gothic 
 invasion, and she could not stand the test ; and so history has 
 recorded the decline and fall of the Roman empire. Venice exerted 
 the same power at first ; and became, in name and in fact, the 
 queen of the Adriatic. But she afterwards failed to exert it at 
 Constantinople, and was overthrown by the Turks whom she de- 
 spised. It makes no difference to the nation being tried, whether 
 her enemies are from within or without. It is all the same to 
 us whether a hundred thousand men in arms have landed on our 
 shores from abroad, or a hundred thousand have gathered from the 
 dismal swamps of the South. In either case, there is a foe to be 
 vanquished, or to vanquish us. 
 
 The only condition upon which a nation like ours can exist is, that 
 it possesses and will exert the force necessary to crush any force 
 that can be brought against it, from within or without. This is the 
 simple .proposition which must be made good in arms, in order for 
 the existence of any government. The nation that cannot do this, 
 will be extinguished so soon as the great powers make up their 
 minds that the farce of its nationality had better be considered as 
 " played out." Such will be our position, unless we can crush the 
 Confederacy by force. If, after the repulses we have sustained, 
 we settle up the controversy, the world will see — and what is worse, 
 it will be true — that we receded from the contest through fear 
 of the result ; through distrust of our ability to destroy our ene- 
 mies and repeople their section, which all must see that it is our 
 true policy to do, if we can. Then the word will pass from lip to 
 lip among the nations, that this people of the United States, so 
 boastful and so free — this people that has assumed to be the regen- 
 erator of the world, could not quell a conspiracy of its own malcon- 
 tents, at home. How long after that can we exist? Only so much 
 time as is necessary for our riches to tempt the cupidity of some pow- 
 
12 
 
 erful nation. Our remaining history -will be like the history of Car- 
 thage after the battle of Zama, or of Athens after the battle of 
 Syracuse, or of Greece, taken as a whole, after the battle of Chero- 
 nsea, or of Rome after the first Gothic invasion, — a succession of 
 dying throes and shortening gasps, the pulse of national life growing 
 fainter and fainter, till it ceases to beat. Then we, who have glo- 
 ried in the symbol of the eagle, shall be like the eagle struck in 
 mid air by a fatal dart. That he is to fall and die, is certain. The 
 only question is, how long he will quiver upon his pinions — with 
 what Avrithings he will descend from the skies, and to how much of 
 agony and humiliation the proud bird will be subjected, before he 
 stretches himself upon the plain and expires. 
 
 The military disasters which we have met with in the last three 
 years, find their counterpart in every modern nation capable of con- 
 ducting war on a great scale. France, with a population of thirty 
 millions, fought through the campaigns of 1791, '92, and '93 with a 
 series of the most disheartening defeats. In 1792, she took the 
 field with four armies, amounting in the aggregate to 193,000 men. 
 In the north, Rochambeau was at the head of forty thousand 
 infantry and eight thousand cavalry. In the center, La Fayette 
 was stationed with forty-five thousand infantry and seven thousand 
 cavalry. In the east, Luckner with thirty-five thousand infantry 
 rested upon the Rhine ; and in the south, Montesquieu, with fifty 
 thousand men, stretched his fine along the Pyrenees and the Rhone. 
 These armies were the offspring of national enthusiasm, and were • 
 all unsuccessful. Lafayette was surprised and defeated at Mau- 
 beuge. Luckner, after a severe check, was driven back to the 
 frontier. Rochambeau and Montesquieu were alike unfortunate, 
 not from the cowardice of the men ; for afterwards, when they had 
 a General to lead them, they became the heroes of Austerlitz, Wa- 
 gram, and Marengo. As if to fill the cup of national woe to overflow- 
 ing, the dreadful insurrection of La Vendee then broke out, which 
 was not suppressed till torrents of blood flowed, and one of the most 
 flourishing cities of France was laid in ruins. In 1794, the fourth 
 year of the war, all was changed ; and that campaign was the most 
 memorable in her annals. During all this time, France had been 
 looking for a general. That year, she found one in the person of 
 Napoleon Bonaparte. She had lacked unanimity among her people. 
 
13 
 
 That year she found it. She had been in want of munitions of 
 war ; her treasury empty, her hospitals filled. That year the star 
 of Napoleon rose upon the troubled night of disaster, and brought 
 back victory to her banner ; and then her armies were supplied 
 from the districts which they conquered. 
 
 There is not a perfect parallel between France and ourselves, for 
 the first three years of these two wars, because the Generals of the 
 Federal forces Jiave not always been unsuccessful. Some of them 
 have gained important advantages. Some have won victories. But 
 long ere this the war would have closed, had it not been for the 
 political party at the North, which is led by such men as the Sey- 
 mours and the Woods. They are fully identified with the traitors 
 of the South. They know that if the nation succeeds in the war, 
 they are politically dead. But if defeat or base compromise brings 
 peace, they hope to be able, with the help of their Southern allies, 
 to revive again the power of the pro-slavery democracy. Hence, 
 with fiendish ingenuity they plot for the defeat of the Union armies. 
 They have spies in all the Federal camps, and the evident readi- 
 ness of our foes to meet almost every military movement which we 
 have made, shows that they have been apprised of them in advance. 
 The Northern Copperheads have given them the information. Their 
 hopes of power and plunder are founded upon national calamity and 
 disgrace. To effect their infamous schemes, they resort to every 
 subterfuge which the most devilish art can devise. To under- 
 mine the faith of the people in the solvency of their Government, 
 they point to the national debt, and proclaim that the abyss of 
 national bankruptcy is opening before us. Let us look into it, then. 
 The nation owes to day seventeen hundred and fifty millions of dol- 
 lars. But we estimate the financial condition of a man not alone 
 by what he owes, but also by what he has to pay it with, and by 
 what he receives and expends. One man may be poor, and owe 
 nothing. Another may owe thousands, and yet be rich. The same 
 is true of nations. If we should hear that Norway had borrowed 
 fifty millions, we should say, that nation has shouldered a heavy 
 load. But when Russia borrows fifty millions, it is a mere baga- 
 telle, because she has vast tracts of new land, and boundless re- 
 sources. She has a great agriculture, and a growing commerce. 
 She has risen to a very high pitch of prosperity and grandeur. She 
 
14 
 
 is every clay subduing the forest, and building steamships and rail- 
 roads. Though populous in some sections, she is more towering in 
 point of area than in numbers. In fact, she is a country essentially 
 the same as our own — young, strong, and growing. She has a 
 population of seventy-three millions, on an area of eight and one- 
 third millions of square miles. Like us, she has a long seaboard, 
 extending, by sea and ocean, mOre than twenty-five thousand miles — 
 a distance equal to the circumference of the earth. Her land' fron- 
 tier is over nine thousand miles long. The greatest length of the 
 empire is nine thousand six hundred and eighty-one miles, and 
 the greatest breadth is two thousand six hundred and twenty- 
 eight miles. Like us, her increase has been rapid. She did not 
 emerge from barbarism till late in the seventeenth century ; and in 
 1722, we find her population was fourteen millions ; in 1815, forty- 
 five millions ; in 1825, fifty-five millions ; in 1851, sixty-four mil- 
 lions ; and now, in 1861, it is seventy-three millions. 
 
 What is a debt of seventeen hundred and fifty millions of dollars 
 to a nation like the Russians, with such an area, and such resources? 
 It would make Switzerland or Sweden insolvent ; but it would be 
 nothing to Russia ; and it will not sink the American Union. A 
 careful estimate, based upon previous growth, shows that in 1870 
 the taxable property of the Atlantic, Middle, and Western States, 
 will amount to thirty-five thousand millions of dollars ; and in 1880 
 it will reach the enormous aggregate of eighty thousand millions. 
 Thus, for seventeen hundred and fifty millions, which the nation 
 owes to-day, she will have eighty thousand millions to pay it with', 
 sixteen years from this time. An estimate of the increase of popu- 
 lation, not less carefully made, shows that in the year 1880, the 
 population of the same States will be fifty-six millions ; so that the 
 national debt of to-day, provided it does not increase, will rest in 
 1880 upon the shoulders of fifty-six millions of people, worth eighty 
 thousand millions of dollars, and it can be paid without taxing the 
 people at large up to the rate of taxation in San Francisco for the 
 present fiscal year. 
 
 The unthinking and the pusillanimous are startled by the figures 
 which the reptile Copperheads of the North arrange before their 
 eyes, to alarm the avarice of misers, and shake the public credit. 
 But an examination of reliable data, shows the unbounded ability 
 
15 
 
 of the nation to meet all her liabilities, and to emerge from this 
 war, even if it should last twenty years, one of the richest nations 
 in the world. In view of the powerful navy, evoked by this con- 
 test, it is not an absurd conjecture, that at its close it will give to 
 American merchants the lead in the world's commerce, and make 
 New York to be what London has been, the center of the wealth 
 of the globe. It is a memorable fact that in twenty-five years 
 after the close of the twenty years' 'war, Great Britain trebled her 
 exports, doubled her tunnage, and increased her population by 
 millions. The resources of vigorous nations are developed with 
 redoubled rapidity, by necessity. They increase with the demand 
 for them ; and I assert, unhesitatingly, that if we can keep the foe 
 out of the free States, we can fight for forty years, and be richer 
 at the close than at the commencement of the war ; and if the 
 flower of the young men could reappear ; if to the desolate homes 
 of the North the loved and lost could return ; if the wounds and 
 woes, which the fiends of the Confederacy have inflicted upon the 
 people, could be healed, the nation could afford to laugh at the 
 bugbear of national bankruptcy. It is a fit emanation from the 
 poisonous, rancorous reptiles of the North, who have taken the 
 appropriate name of Copperheads. The debt that we owe, though 
 large, is chiefly due to our own people, and it gives every creditor 
 of the Republic a direct interest in its preservation. I am not 
 seeking to show that a national debt is a national blessing ; but only 
 that, if the calamity of indebtedness must come upon us, for the 
 national preservation, the country is able to pay it. Nor do I seek 
 to show that it was a blessing to France to issue millions upon mil- 
 lions of assignats, nor that their depreciation was a benefit. On 
 the contrary, the result of all this was an evil ; but as a choice 
 between that and the greater evil of national annihilation, I believe 
 that the nation acted wisely ; and so also this nation is acting 
 wisely, though many private fortunes here, as there, will be ruined. 
 For the soldier of the Confederacy, who shoulders his musket 
 and fights — for the southern-born secessionist, who hates us with- 
 out knowing us, and wants to kill us because we want to save the 
 Union, bad as his cause is, I can make some allowance. But for 
 the miserable Judas of the North — the monster, whose heart is with 
 the enemies of his country — the viper who was reared in a land of 
 
16 
 
 freedom, and yet is false to freedom — the degraded and spiritless 
 wretch, in whose frozen bosom burns no love for his own native 
 land — no pride in her traditions and history — no memories, nor 
 attachments — no fond and proud associations which make him feel 
 that he has a country — no feeling of common cause with those who 
 are bleeding and dying for the old fatherland — will the time never 
 come when such detestable felons can be brought to the gallows ? 
 0, if I had the power to do what I have the will to do, I would 
 hang all traitors ; but the Northern traitor should hang the high- 
 est and the first. 
 
 There are writers who inform us that the dog is the natural ser- 
 vant of man, because when found wild on the central plains of Asia, 
 if he chance to encounter a man, he comes crouching at his feet, 
 and fawns, and affectionately licks his hand, in token of Ins acknowl- 
 edgment that man is his master. In the same way the Copper- 
 head of the North is the natural servant of the slave power. 
 Wherever he finds it, he crouches and fawns before it, like the dog 
 before his master. 
 
 The secessionist is the political brigand of the country. He is 
 false to the Union, and he makes no other profession. But the 
 Northern Copperhead, who talks of peace and humanity, is false 
 to it, whatever may be his professions ; and there are so many ex- 
 cuses arising from education, habits, and birth, that I esteem the 
 secessionist almost a saint, compared with the Northern Copperhead 
 — the loathsome scavenger of the Southern Confederacy. 
 
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