We say this after a full consideration of the whole subject as drawn from the facts heretofore detailed in this volume, and do not think we shall have to take a single word of it back. True, very true, as eloquently stated in a letter from our old friend, J. E. Brush, Esq., of New York--"Floyd, Thompson, and Cobb, of Buchanan's Cabinet, had so disarmed and depleted the government of means, that Lincoln had very slender resources; and the gullibility of Northern business men in filling the orders of Southern men for war material, for months previous to the opening of the war, proves that they meant business, while the North did not take in the situation at all;" still we think, but for the secret machinations of Northern sympathizers--of men on whom, for a time, the government relied and entirely trusted, including generals in the field, officers in the navy, and even officers in the Cabinet--the war would have been ended at least two years sooner, and hundreds of millions saved to the taxpayers of the country.
We are aware that such a statement at first sight seems extravagant, if not wild; but if the reader will carefully weigh each factor of the problem, and follow out the relation which each bears to the other; and then if he will suspend judgment until he shall have read the last chapter and last line of this book--so that he shall have all the facts before him, all the secret springs which were so adroitly worked, but of which nobody even suspected the existence, all the villanies of men singly and of men united in political and religious associations--we have no doubt at all but what he will reach the same conclusion that we have reached in the above paragraph. Facts and figures never lie when properly placed; but men are so disposed to shut their eyes against unpleasant facts, and so inclined to place figures in such a way as will bring the result they wish for, that the most palpable truths are often hid, and kept hid, from the public, until by some accident or incident the secrets are revealed, as in this volume.
CHAPTER XVII. FACTS, FIGURES, AND FAIR INFERENCES.
|WHEN, on the 15th of April, 1861, Abraham Lincoln, as President of the United States, called for 75,000 men, for three months, to suppress the rebellion, he did it after repeated consultations with every member of his Cabinet, both when assembled in council and privately with each individual member. That Cabinet was one of the ablest, if not the very ablest, that any President of the United States ever had about him. William H. Seward had been Governor of New York, had long been United States Senator, and understood the strength and resources of each individual State, and of the whole Union, as well, probably, as any man then living. Salmon P. Chase had been Governor of Ohio, long a United States Senator, was a thorough statistician, mathematician, and financier, and had made the resources of both States and nation a long and faithful study. Simon Cameron had been a statistician and banker nearly his whole life, had long been a United States Senator, was a man of unusually strong common sense, and had, from a political stand-point, made the Southern States and their peculiar institutions and resources a special study. Wells and Smith were good, strong, practical-sensed men; while Blair and Bates were both Southern men, were thoroughly conversant with the institutions, with the leading men, with the wealth, and with the resources of every Southern State.