Leap, gold-hungry patriot! Leap! Leap now—leap for your country’s throat!
Not another hour’s delay.... Place the final pressure on the President.
“Mr. President! Mr. Lincoln! Sign our bill! Please sign our bill now—right now. Quickly, Mr. President! Don’t delay longer. Now!”
Hundreds of cannon were roaring in Virginia. The President was devouring the telegraphic news from the firing line.
Business men—Christian business men—including flag-loving Congressmen, very noble Senators, and many other dollar-mark statesmen, were directly and indirectly urging that the bill be signed—at once, “for the country’s welfare,” of course.
The President, urged by these money-hungry patriots, urged by these “men of high standing,” thus urged, the President, writhing with grief over the Seven Days’ slaughter of his brave volunteers, almost sweating blood in his profound fear,—signed the bill, July 1.
What bill?
The bill that legalized a vast and shameless wrong against the wives and children of brave men on the firing line; the bill that legalized a rape of the National Domain and the Federal Treasury by gilded cowards, while from the Atlantic Ocean to the Rocky Mountains, hundreds of thousands of brave men, ill fed, ill clothed, faced hell under the flag on the firing line; the bill that suddenly made plutocrats of Christian statesmen,—made millionaires of flag-waving traitors piously masquerading as patriots; the bill that created the Union Pacific Railway charter, the astounding terms of which are given presently.
The President was numb and dumb with sadness and a thousand worries.
“The news [of the Seven Days’ Battle],” says Rhodes,[[144]] “was a terrible blow to the President. The finely equipped army which had cost so much exertion and money, had gone forward with high hopes of conquest, and apparently bore the fate of the Union, had been defeated, and was now in danger of destruction or surrender. This calamity the head of the Nation must face.... The elaborate preparations of the North had come to naught.... Lincoln grew thin and haggard and his dispatches ... of these days are an avowal of defeat.”