provided and the Executive expended a larger sum in each
year of the civil struggle than the total revenues of the Government
had been for the seventy-two years elapsing between the inauguration
of Washington and the inauguration of Lincoln.

--When the power of the Nation was challenged, the Army was so small
as scarcely to provide an efficient guard for the residence of the
Chief Magistrate against a hostile movement of the disloyal population
that surrounded him. Congress provided for the assembling of a host
that grew in magnitude until it surpassed in numbers the largest
military force ever put in the field by a European power.

--A domestic institution whose existence had menaced the peace of the
country for forty years, and now threatened the National life, was
either to receive renewed strength by another compromise, or was to
be utterly overthrown and destroyed. Congress had the foresight, the
philanthropy, the courage to choose the latter course, and to
transform four millions of slaves into four millions of citizens.

--Triumphant in the struggle of arms, Congress had the statesmanship
and persistence to bind up in the Organic Law of the Republic the
rights which victory had secured, and to provide against the recurrence
of a rebellion which imperiled the existence of free institutions.

The action of Congress and the spirit that inspired it were but the
action and spirit of the loyal people. A common danger awakened them
to a sense of their aggregate strength, and that awakening proved to be
the beginning of a new progress. Prolonged peace and quiet in a
country, even of our large resources, had engendered the habit of
caution, of economy, of extreme conservatism. The dominance of the
State-rights' school had created in the minds of the people a distrust
of the power of the General Government,--a fact which no doubt was
taken into the calculations of those who revolted against its
authority. As an illustration of the weakness of administration under
their lead, it may be recalled that during the years of Mr. Buchanan's
Presidency,--and indeed during a part of the Presidency of Franklin
Pierce,--the project of a Pacific Railroad had been considered, and
year after year abandoned, because of the argument, first, that the
National Government had no power to contribute to its construction;
and, second, that the hundred millions of dollars required to complete
it was a sum beyond the power of the Governm