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.
One would have thought the combined wisdom of such a body of men as near perfection, as near certainty in political prophecy, as it was possible for men to attain, when judging of the future by inferences drawn from actual knowledge of the past and present; and yet, subsequent events proved that never were men wider from the mark than were these men in advising the President to call out 75,000 men for three months to subdue the rebellion. Why this great error of calculation and judgment?
Those who have carefully read the preceding chapters of this book will have the answer, in part, but not the whole answer. Of course, President Lincoln and his Cabinet thoroughly understood the sympathy which existed between English cotton-spinners and American cotton-growers, and, in their calculations, made due allowance for this feeling. They also understood thoroughly the sympathy existing between the aristocracy of England and king cotton of America; for they well knew that the aristocracy of England were largely the owners of those cotton-mills or furnished the capital with which to run them. For this, then, they also made due allowance in all their calculations; and, with a view to checkmate this influence as far as possible, sent Thurlow Weed on a secret mission to England. They understood the business relations of the Pacific Mail Steamship Company with the Southern States, as well as the relations of other incorporated companies, and of merchants generally, with the South. They knew of the debt that was then owing—nearly two hundred millions of dollars—from Southern merchants to Northern merchants, and fully comprehended the sympathy which such community of interests would naturally create between the parties; and for all this made due allowance. They understood, of course, the love of gain natural to every man, and that merchants, manufacturers, and others, by the thousands, would be on the constant lookout to make money out of the war in any possible way commensurate with their own safety; and for this made due allowance in their calculations as to what was to be overcome. And last, but not least, they well understood the general sympathy which was felt by the Democratic party of the North for the people and peculiar institutions of the South, and how ready some of the leaders of that party would be to aid the South in any way they could with safety to themselves; but they also understood that a very large number of the followers of the masses—of the bone and sinew of that party—were patriotic; while another portion, and a very large portion, would be ready to hire themselves to do whatever would pay best, and that if large monthly pay and large bounties were offered, these men would be as ready to hire themselves to kill their fellow-men as to slaughter cattle; and with these two elements (the patriotic and the mercenary), they believed the party could be so far controlled as to prevent it from doing any material injury to the Union cause.
But while comprehending all these things, and making due allowance for them all, they did not comprehend nor make allowance for the deep-seated, desperate, condemnable villany that was hid away in the hearts of these same Democratic leaders, and that would come forth from its hiding-places whenever and wherever it could do so with the hope of gain to itself, or with the hope of so crippling the Union cause that it would finally fail, when the affairs of the government would again fall into the hands of the Democratic party.
They did not comprehend, nor was it possible for any human foresight to have conceived any one of the many secret devices recorded in the preceding chapters of this volume, whereby men could and would serve the rebellion in the guise of Unionism; whereby men would, while playing the patriot, really be the most desperate rebels At heart; whereby men could, while receiving pay as generals in the Union army, do acts whereby millions of dollars were lost to loyal merchants; whereby transportation companies would, through its leading officers, while receiving large pay from the United States government for services legitimately rendered, be all the while aiding the rebellion by furnishing ships and money with which to exchange cotton for war materials and army supplies; whereby, in a word, the Democratic party, as a party would so exercise its influence that vice disguised would seem virtue personified; that the promise of a candidacy to the office of President would so change the heart and paralyze the arm of a Union general as to make him favor the rebel cause by delays, and by transferring (through the closing of a provost-court) the sinews of war (millions of dollars) from Union pockets to rebel coffers; that steamship companies, while receiving the protection of Union arms, would be all the while aiding the rebel cause; and that men, otherwise regarded as honorable, high-minded gentlemen, would, because of old political prejudice and present gain, meet in secret conclaves in New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, and then and there concoct the most desperate measures in aid of rebellion. These were secrets which no human eye could penetrate, exigencies against which no human foresight could provide, and hence it cannot be said in truth that these men failed in judgment, since they only failed upon points which were entirely outside of all human calculation.
But for these things, three months' service of 75,000 men would have been amply sufficient to crush the rebellion, and from this we draw our first inference—which no one can pronounce otherwise than fair—that whatever time it took beyond three months to crush the rebellion, whatever men it took beyond 75,000, whatever money it cost beyond the pay of 75,000 for three months, together with collateral expenses for the same time, and whatever lives it cost beyond what would have been the probable mortality among the 75,000, are chargeable, fairly chargeable, unquestionably chargeable, to the Democratic party as a party. We are careful to say as a party, for we know many individuals of that party who are as honorable, as pure, as patriotic as any in the Republican party, and who only continue their connection with that party (for they know its past sins and present corruptions quite as well as we do) either because their fathers were Democrats' and they do not wish to be regarded as "turn-coats," or because they think the chances of political preferment are better in the Democratic than in the Republican party; or, as they have sometimes replied to us, half in jest and half in earnest, "the more corrupt the party is as a party, the greater necessity is there to have some good men remain in it, to prevent it from doing greater injury to the country."
As historian, and as readers searching after truth, our next inquiry will naturally be—First. How much more time did it take to subdue the rebellion? Second. How many more men did it take? Third. How much additional did it cost? Fourth. How many additional lives were sacrificed? All these we regard as properly belonging to "Secrets of the Late Rebellion, now Revealed for the First Time," for the reason that no one heretofore has ever made researches in this particular direction, and while the facts have existed ever since they came into being (just as the continent of America existed long before Columbus discovered it), yet they have never until now been revealed to the public in the relations and connections to which they historically belong.