USA > California > Santa Clara County > San Jose > War the only means of preserving our nationality. An oration, delivered at San Jose, Santa Clara County, Cal., July 4, 1864 > Part 2
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That year she found it. She had been in want of munitions of · war; her treasury empty, her hospitals filled. That year the star of Napoleon rose upon the troubled night of disaster, and brought back victory to her banner ; and then her armies were supplied from the districts which they conquered.
There is not a perfect parallel between France and ourselves, for the first three years of these two wars, because the Generals of the Federal forces have not always been unsuccessful. Some of them have gained important advantages. Some have won victories. But long ere this the war would have closed, had it not been for the political party at the North, which is led by such men as the Sey- mours and the Woods. They are fully identified with the traitors of the South. They know that if the nation succeeds in the war, they are politically dead. But if defeat or base compromise brings peace, they hope to be able, with the help of their Southern allies, to revive again the power of the pro-slavery democracy. Hence,
with fiendish ingenuity they plot for the defeat of the Union armies. They have spies in all the Federal camps, and the evident readi- ness of our foes to meet almost every military movement which we have made, shows that they have been apprised of them in advance. The Northern Copperheads have given them the information. Their hopes of power and plunder are founded upon national calamity and disgrace. To effect their infamous schemes, they resort to every subterfuge which the most devilish art can devise. To under- mine the faith of the people in the solvency of their Government, they point to the national debt, and proclaim that the abyss of national bankruptcy is opening before us. Let us look into it, then. The nation owes to day seventeen hundred and fifty millions of dol- lars. But we estimate the financial condition of a man not alone by what he owes, but also by what he has to pay it with, and by what he receives and expends. One man may be poor, and owe nothing. Another may owe thousands, and yet be rich. The same is true of nations. If we should hear that Norway had borrowed fifty millions, we should say, that nation has shouldered a heavy load. But when Russia borrows fifty millions, it is a mere baga- telle, because she has vast tracts of new land, and boundless re- sources. She has a great agriculture, and a growing commerce. She has risen to a very high pitch of prosperity and grandeur. She
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is every day subduing the forest, and building steamships and rail- roads. Though populous in some sections, she is more towering in point of area than in numbers. In fact, she is a country essentially the same as our own-young, strong, and growing. She has a population of seventy-three millions, on an area of eight and one- third millions of square miles. Like us, she has a long seaboard, extending, by sea and ocean, more than twenty-five thousand miles- a distance equal to the circumference of the earth. Her land fron- tier is over nine thousand miles long. The greatest length of the empire is nine thousand six hundred and eighty-one miles, and the greatest breadth is two thousand six hundred and twenty- eight miles. Like us, her increase has been rapid. She did not emerge from barbarism till late in the seventeenth century ; and in 1722, we find her population was fourteen millions ; in 1815, forty- five millions ; in 1825, fifty-five millions ; in 1851, sixty-four mil- lions ; and now, in 1864, it is seventy-three millions.
What is a debt of seventeen hundred and fifty millions of dollars to a nation like the Russians, with such an area, and such resources ? It would make Switzerland or Sweden insolvent; but it would be nothing to Russia ; and it will not sink the American Union. A careful estimate, based upon previous growth, shows that in 1870 the taxable property of the Atlantic, Middle, and Western States, will amount to thirty-five thousand millions of dollars; and in 1880 it will reach the enormous aggregate of eighty thousand millions. Thus, for seventeen hundred and fifty millions, which the nation owes to-day, she will have eighty thousand millions to pay it with, sixteen years from this time. An estimate of the increase of popu- lation, not less carefully made, shows that in the year 1880, the population of the same States will be fifty-six millions ; so that the national debt of to-day, provided it does not increase, will rest in 1880 upon the shoulders of fifty-six millions of people, worth eighty thousand millions of dollars, and it can be paid without taxing the people at large up to the rate of taxation in San Francisco for the present fiscal year.
The unthinking and the pusillanimous are startled by the figures which the reptile Copperheads of the North arrange before their eyes, to alarm the avarice of misers, and shake the public credit. But an examination of reliable data, shows the unbounded ability
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of the nation to meet all her liabilities, and to emerge from this war, even if it should last twenty years, one of the richest nations in the world. In view of the powerful navy, evoked by this con- test, it is not an absurd conjecture, that at its close it will give to American merchants the lead in the world's commerce, and make New York to be what London has been, the center of the wealth of the globe. It is a memorable fact that in twenty-five years after the close of the twenty years' war, Great Britain trebled her exports, doubled her tunnage, and increased her population by millions. The resources of vigorous nations are developed with redoubled rapidity, by necessity. They increase with the demand for them ; and I assert, unhesitatingly, that if we can keep the foe out of the free States, we can fight for forty years, and be richer at the close than at the commencement of the war; and if the flower of the young men could reappear ; if to the desolate homes of the North the loved and lost could return; if the wounds and woes, which the fiends of the Confederacy have inflicted upon the people, could be healed, the nation could afford to laugh at the bugbear of national bankruptey. It is a fit emanation from the poisonous, rancorous reptiles of the North, who have taken the appropriate name of Copperheads. The debt that we owe, though large, is chiefly due to our own people, and it gives every ereditor of the Republic a direct interest in its preservation. I am not seeking to show that a national debt is a national blessing ; but only that, if the calamity of indebtedness must come upon us, for the national preservation, the country is able to pay it. Nor do I seek to show that it was a blessing to France to issue millions upon mil- lions of assignats, nor that their depreciation was a benefit. On the contrary, the result of all this was an evil; but as a choice between that and the greater evil of national annihilation, I believe that the nation acted wisely; and so also this nation is acting wisely, though many private fortunes here, as there, will be ruined.
For the soldier of the Confederacy, who shoulders his musket and fights-for the southern-born secessionist, who hates us with- out knowing us, and wants to kill us because we want to save the Union, bad as his cause is, I can make some allowance. But for the miserable Judas of the North-the monster, whose heart is with the enemies of his country-the viper who was reared in a land of
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freedom, and yet is false to freedom-the degraded and spiritless wretch, in whose frozen bosom burns no love for his own native land-no pride in her traditions and history-no memories, nor attachments-no fond and proud associations which make him feel that he has a country-no feeling of common cause with those who are bleeding and dying for the old fatherland-will the time never come when such detestable felons can be brought to the gallows ? O, if I had the power to do what I have the will to do, I would hang all traitors ; but the Northern traitor should hang the high- est and the first.
There are writers who inform us that the dog is the natural ser- vant of man, because when found wild on the central plains of Asia, if he chance to encounter a man, he comes crouching at his feet, and fawns, and affectionately licks his hand, in token of his acknowl- edgment that man is his master. In the same way the Copper- head of the North is the natural servant of the slave power. Wherever he finds it, he crouches and fawns before it, like the dog before his master.
The secessionist is the political brigand of the country. He is false to the Union, and he makes no other profession. But the Northern Copperhead, who talks of peace and humanity, is false to it, whatever may be his professions ; and there are so many ex- cuses arising from education, habits, and birth, that I esteem the secessionist almost a saint, compared with the Northern Copperhead -the loathsome scavenger of the Southern Confederacy.
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