Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 / From Lincoln to Garfield, with a Review of the Events Which Led to the Political Revolution of 1860

by James Gillespie Blaine

The total expenditures of Great Britain during the French Revolution and the career of Napoleon were £1,490,000,888, or nearly five times that sum in dollars. The largest expenditures in any single year were in 1815, £130,305,958, or in dollars, $631,976,894. After 1862 our expenditures were not so low as that in any year, and they were more than double that sum in the closing year of the war when the great armies were mustered out of service and final payment was made to all.

The British expenditures in the war against the French during the period of the Revolution were a little more than £490,000,000 and against Napoleon a little less than £1,000,000,000; or $4,850,000,000 in the aggregate, for twenty-three years. The total outlay was therefore larger than our payments on account of the rebellion. But there was no period of ten years in her wars with the French, in which Great Britain expended so much as the United States expended in four years. The loss of Great Britain by discounts in raising money or by the use of depreciated paper was greater than that incurred by the United States. A leading English authority says that of the vast burden up to 1816, the "artificial enhancements due to discounts in raising money were so great that for every £100 received into the treasury a national debt of £173 was created."

No other wars than those of England and France can be compared with ours in point of expenditure. For the war between France and Germany in 1870 the indemnity demanded by the conqueror was 5,000,000,000 francs, equivalent in American money to $930,000,000. This sum was much in excess of the outlay of Germany. The expenses of France on her own account in that contest were 1,873,238,000 francs, or $348,432,068, and this is only from one-half to one- third of the annual outlay of the United States during the rebellion. France added to the interest charge at this time 349,637,116 francs, indicating that the whole sum of the indemnity and other war expenditures has passed into the principal of the permanent debt of the country.

The one grand feature of this lavish expenditure of wealth by the Government of the United States is that it was directed and enforced by the people themselves. No imperial power commanded it, no kingly prerogative controlled it. It was the free, unbiased, unchangeable will of the Sovereign People. They declared at the ballot-box, by untrammeled popular suffrage, that the war must go on. "The American people,"—said Henry Winter Davis in the House of Representatives at one of the most exciting periods of the struggle,—"the American people, rising to the height of the occasion, dedicate this generation to the sword, and, pouring out the blood of their children, demand that there be no compromise; that ruin to the Republic or ruin to the Rebel Confederacy are the only alternatives; that no peace shall be made except under the banner of Victory. Standing on this great resolve to accept nothing but Victory or ruin, Victory is ours!"

At the outbreak of hostilities the Government discovered that it had no Navy at its command. The Secretary, Mr. Welles, found upon entering his office but a single ship in a Northern port fitted to engage in aggressive operations. In the beginning of the great contest which was at once to be waged upon the seas, wherein the Government proposed to close Southern ports, and the South to destroy Northern commerce, the advantage was clearly with the South. From Cape Henry to the Rio Grande the Navy of the United States was called upon to create an effective blockade against all ingress and egress. The conformation of the coast, which along great distances prevented the entrance and exit of ocean-going vessels, materially aided in the task, but it was still such a one as had never before been attempted in the naval history of the world. The line to be subjected to blockade was as long as the line from the Bay of Biscay to the Golden Horn and in many respects it was far more difficult to control.

This blockade was an absolute necessity imposed on the United States. The South relied with implicit faith upon its ability to secure by the sale of cotton the means of carrying on the war. The Confederate Government did not believe that the United States would hazard a conflict with the manufacturing nations of Europe, by attempting a blockade that would prevent the export of the staple; or if they did believe it, they looked upon it as the fatuous step on the part of the National Government that would promptly induce intervention by the combined power of England and France. This reliance was explicitly stated in advance by Mr. Hammond of South Carolina, who three years before the inauguration of Mr. Lincoln, on the fourth day of March, 1858, made this declaration in the United-States Senate:—

"Without firing a gun, without drawing a sword, should the North make war on us, we could bring the whole world to our feet. What would happen if no cotton was furnished for three years? I will not stop to depict what every one can imagine, but this is certain, England would topple headlong and carry the whole civilized world with her. No, you dare not make war on cotton. No Power on earth dares to make war upon cotton. Cotton is King."

EFFECTIVENESS OF THE BLOCKADE.

Boastful and impotent as the declaration of Mr. Hammond now seems, it had a better basis of fact to stand upon than many of the fiery predictions in which Southern statesmen were wont to indulge. The importance of cotton to the civilized world could hardly be exaggerated, and yet it was this very importance that forced the United States to the course which was pursued. The National Government could not permit the export of cotton without constantly aggrandizing the power of the rebellion, and it could not prevent its export without tempting the manufacturing nations of Europe to raise the blockade. The Administration wisely prepared to enforce the blockade and to meet all the consequences.

To accomplish its undertaking, the energy of the Nation was devoted to the creation of a navy. By the end of the year 1863 the government had six hundred vessels of war which were increased to seven hundred before the rebellion was subdued. Of the total number at least seventy-five were ironclad. It may be instanced with laudable pride that one enterprising man, honorably distinguished as a scientific engineer, constructed in less than a hundred days an armored squadron of eight ships, in the aggregate of five thousand tons burden, capable of steaming nine knots per hour and destined for effective service upon the rivers of the South-West. When the contractor, Mr. James B. Eads of St. Louis, agreed to furnish these steamers to the Government, the timber from which they were to be built was still standing in the forest and the machinery with which the armor was to be rolled was not constructed.