o long
unvisited by civilization?--for this, that Time, the father of empires,
unbound the virgin zone of this youngest of his daughters, and gave her,
beautiful in the long veil of her forests, to the rude embrace of the
adventurous Colonist? All this is what we see around us, now, now while
we are actually fighting this great battle, and supporting this great
load of indebtedness. Wait till the diamonds go back to the Jews of
Amsterdam; till the plate-glass window bears the fatal announcement, For
Sale or to Let; till the voice of our Miriam is obeyed, as she sings,

"Weave no more silks, ye Lyons looms!"

till the gold-dust is combed from the golden locks, and hoarded to buy
bread; till the fast-driving youth smokes his clay-pipe on the platform
of the horse-cars; till the music-grinders cease because none will pay
them; till there are no peaches in the windows at twenty-four dollars
a dozen, and no heaps of bananas and pine-apples selling at the
street-corners; till the ten-flounced dress has but three flounces,
and it is felony to drink champagne; wait till these changes show
themselves, the signs of deeper wants, the preludes of exhaustion and
bankruptcy; then let us talk of the Maelstrom;--but till then, let
us not be cowards with our purses, while brave men are emptying their
hearts upon the earth for us; let us not whine over our imaginary ruin,
while the reversed current of circling events is carrying us farther and
farther, every hour, out of the influence of the great failing which
was born of our wealth, and of the deadly sin which was our fatal
inheritance!

Let us take a brief general glance at the wide field of discussion we
are just leaving.

On Friday, the twelfth day of the month of April, in the year of our
Lord eighteen hundred and sixty-one, at half-past four of the clock
in the morning, a cannon was aimed and fired by the authority of South
Carolina at the wall of a fortress belonging to the United States. Its
ball carried with it the hatreds, the rages of thirty years, shaped and
cooled in the mould of malignant deliberation. Its wad was the charter
of our national existence. Its muzzle was pointed at the stone which
bore the symbol of our national sovereignty. As the echoes of its
thunder died away, the telegraph clicked one word through every office
of the land. That word was WAR!

War is a child that devours its nurses one after another, until it is
claimed by its true parents. This