h was father
to the thought, has not been realized to any appreciable extent. The
pecuniary losses have been in a great measure compensated by the immense
demands of the war; and when faction has attempted to raise its head, it
has been compelled to retire before the patriotic rebuke of the people.
And although the vast expenditures of the war give present relief; by
drawing largely on the resources of the future, yet the strength we
acquire is none the less real or less effectual in overthrowing the
rebellion.

But this sudden and grand emergency, with all its appalling concomitants
of lives sacrificed, property destroyed, commercial disaster, and social
derangement, has given a rare opportunity for the testing of our
national character, and of our ability to meet and overcome the most
tremendous difficulties and dangers. Perhaps the versatility of American
genius and its ready adaptation to the new circumstances, are even more
wonderful than any other exhibition made by our people in this great
national crisis. There has never been any good reason to doubt the
capacity of any portion of American citizens for warlike occupations,
nor their possession of the moral qualities necessary to make them good
soldiers. The long period of peace which has blessed our country, with
the industrial, educational, and moral improvement produced by it, has
rendered war justly distasteful to the Free States of the Union. They
were slow to recognize the necessity for it; and nothing but the most
solemn convictions of duty would have aroused them to the stern and
unanimous determination with which they have entered on the present
struggle. Swift would have been our degeneration, if the spirit of our
fathers had already died out among us. But our history of less than a
century since the Revolutionary war has fully maintained the
self-reliant character of Americans and demonstrated their military
abilities; and if the commercial and manufacturing populations of
particular sections were supposed to have become somewhat enervated by
long exemption from the labors and perils of war, it was certain that
our large agricultural regions and especially our frontier settlements
were peopled with men inured to toil and familiar with danger,
constituting the best material for armies to be found in any country.
Nor was it in fact true that any considerable portion of our people,
even those drawn from the stores and workshops of the cities, had become