They Were A
Great People; Feeding The World, Adding Daily To The Mechanical
Appliances Of Mankind, Increasing In Population Beyond All Measures
Of Such Increase Hitherto Known, And Extending Education As Fast As
They Extended Their Numbers.
Poverty had as yet found no place
among them, and hunger was an evil of which they had read but were
themselves ignorant.
Each man among their crowds had a right to be
proud of his manhood. To read and write - I am speaking here of the
North - was as common as to eat and drink. To work was no disgrace,
and the wages of work were plentiful. To live without work was the
lot of none. What blessing above these blessings was needed to make
a people great and happy? And now a stranger visiting them would
declare that they are wallowing in a very slough of despond. The
only trade open is the trade of war. The axe of the woodsman is at
rest; the plow is idle; the artificer has closed his shop. The roar
of the foundery is still heard because cannon are needed, and the
river of molten iron comes out as an implement of death. The stone-
cutter's hammer and the mason's trowel are never heard. The gold of
the country is hiding itself as though it had returned to its mother
earth, and the infancy of a paper currency has been commenced. Sick
soldiers, who have never seen a battle-field, are dying by hundreds
in the squalid dirt of their unaccustomed camps.
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