Gold was shipped through the blockade at Mobile to pay the interest on the State bonded debt held in London. It has been charged that this money was borrowed from the Central, Commercial, and Eastern Banks and was never repaid, recovery being denied on the ground that the State could not be sued.[[21]] But the banks received State and Confederate bonds under the new banking law in return for their coin. The exchange was willingly made, for otherwise the banks would have had to continue specie payments or forfeit their charters. And to continue specie payments meant immediate bankruptcy.[[22]] After the war, the State was forbidden to pay any debt incurred in aid of the war, nor could the bonds issued in aid of the war be redeemed. The banks suffered just as all others suffered, and it is difficult to see why the State should make good the losses of the banks in Confederate bonds, and not make good the losses of private individuals. To do either would be contrary to the Fourteenth Amendment.
The last statement of the condition of the Alabama Treasury was as follows:
| Balance in Treasury, September 30, 1864 | $3,713,959 |
| Receipts, September 30, 1864 to May 24, 1865 | 3,776,188 |
| Total | 7,490,147 |
| Disbursements, September 30, 1864 to May 24, 1865 | 6,698,853 |
| Balance in Treasury | 791,294 |
| The balance was in funds as follows: | |
| Checks on Bank of Mobile payable in Confederate notes | $ 11,440 |
| Certificate of deposit, Bank of Mobile, payable in Confederate notes | 1,330 |
| Confederate and State notes in Treasury | 517,889 |
| State notes, change bills (legal shin plasters) | 250,004 |
| Notes of State banks and branches | 358 |
| Bank notes | 424 |
| Silver | 337 |
| Gold on hand | 497 |
| Gold on deposit in Northern banks | 35 |
| Balance | $ 791,294 |
To dispose of nearly seven million dollars in small notes must have kept the Treasury very busy during the last seven months of its existence. It is interesting to note that the Treasury kept at work until May 24, 1865, six weeks after the surrender of General Lee.
THE PATROL AT BARNEGAT
[This famous poem—one of Whitman’s most vigorously descriptive, if not his best in this form of composition—is written on a quarto sheet, and signed: a few pencil corrections do not show in the print. The MS. was sold in New York in 1903.]
EARLY LEGISLATIVE TURMOILS IN NEW JERSEY
Pessimists point to the “frenzied politics” of our day as evidence of the facilis descensus Averni from the purity, the lofty and unselfish patriotism of the fathers; and they sigh over the decadence of the statesmen of these modern times, lament the corruption and essential dishonesty of parties and partisans in general, and yearn for a return of the purity and patriotism and statesmanship of the Fathers. The student of history, however, finds that human nature was and has been much the same through all the ages. The business contracts between merchants of Babylon, stamped on bricks five thousand years ago, and brought to light but yesterday, are in much the same terms as those settled in the courts to-day. The Code of Hammurabi, formulated 2200 B. C., shows in every sentence that like questions of rights and wrongs of persons and things were raised in that remote era as are discussed in the luminous pages of Blackstone, and determined in our own day in the fori of the several States, and in the Capitol at Washington. Is it possible, then, that the development of mankind has been on entirely different lines in the political arena? The thoughtful reader must say no. Freeman’s remark has become trite: “History is past politics, and politics past History.” The burning political issues of the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions of 1799; the purchase of Louisiana; the Embargo of 1807–09; the annexation of Texas; the Oregon question, with its alluring alliteration “Fifty-four-forty or fight;” “Bleeding Kansas” and its other expressions, “Free Speech, Free Soil, Free Men;” Anti-Slavery, Abolitionism and Secession; the Greenback craze—not to speak of more recent partisan shibboleths—all were “politics” of the intensest sort in their day. All are now relegated to the background of “history,” to be studied in the cold chiaro-oscuro of the past. And the men who led the forces marshaled against each other in those great conflicts.—Ah, “there were giants in those days!” Yes, but to their contemporaries they were merely politicians, too often opprobriously dubbed “political tricksters,” or even “traitors to their country.” What a lot of truth there is in the late Thomas B. Reed’s cynicism: “A statesman is a dead politician.”
The lust for power is one of the deepest instincts of the human mind. Civilization has not quenched it, but has merely directed it into new channels. Instead of the savage chieftain who once impressed his will on his fellow-tribesmen by tomahawk or flint-tipped arrow-head, or by terrifying shamanism, we have the statesman—“politician,” if you will—exercising his mastery by all the subtle arts which a keen intellect and a profound knowledge of men and the influences to which they are severally and collectively subject, can devise. Here is a splendid field for the orator, to persuade by his burning eloquence; for the leader, to show his mastery over men; for the partisan, to cajole with the promise of sordid spoil, or to threaten the recreant with loss of influence. There is a glorious zest in this pursuit of power, in this forging to the front as a leader of men. Admirable ambition, if inspired by worthy motives. Fascinating, most attractive, to every virile man. What wonder, if in this eager thirst for eminence among his fellows, the ardent leader becomes oblivious at times to the relative rights of meum and tuum? Success is his aim. He must win. The future of his party, the welfare of his country, demands it. No time to palter over finical questions of what is proper, of what is right. “The end justifies the means.” Ah, facilis est descensus Averni, indeed.