Its death was occasioned by the secret arts and open violence
of foreign and domestic demagogues:
Notwithstanding its whole life was devoted to the performance of every duty to promote
the Union, Credit, Peace, Prosperity, Honor,
and Felicity of its Country.
At its birth, it found the Union of the States dissolving like a rope of snow;
It hath left it stronger than the threefold cord.
It found the United States bankrupts in estate and reputation;
It hath left them unbounded in credit, and respected throughout the world.
It found the Treasuries of the United States and Individual States empty;
It hath left them full and overflowing.
It found all the evidences of public debts worthless as rags;
It hath left them more valuable than gold and silver.
It found the United States at war with the Indian nations;
It hath concluded peace with them all.
It found the aboriginals of the soil inveterate enemies of the whites;
It hath exercised toward them justice and generosity, and hath left them fast friends.
It found Great Britain in possession of all the frontier posts;
It hath demanded their surrender, and it leaves them in the possession of the United States.
It found the American sea-coast utterly defenseless;
It hath left it fortified.
It found our arsenals empty, and magazines decaying;
It hath left them full of ammunition and warlike implements.
It found our country dependent on foreign nations for engines of defense;
It hath left manufactories of cannon and musquets in full work.
It found the American Nation at war with Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli;
It hath made peace with them all.
It found American freemen in Turkish slavery, where they had languished in chains for years;
It hath ransomed them and set them free.
It found the war-worn, invalid soldier starving from want; or, like Belisarius, begging his refuse-meat from door to door;
It hath left ample provision for the regular payment of his pension.