le valor of our troops by presenting to the sympathy of their
chief captives awaiting massacre from their savage associates. And now
we find them, in further contempt of the modes of honorable warfare,
supplying the place of a conquering force by attempts to disorganize our
political society, to dismember our confederated Republic. Happily, like
others, these will recoil on the authors; but they mark the degenerate
counsels from which they emanate, and if they did not belong to a
series of unexampled inconsistencies might excite the greater wonder as
proceeding from a Government which founded the very war in which it has
been so long engaged on a charge against the disorganizing and
insurrectional policy of its adversary.

To render the justice of the war on our part the more conspicuous, the
reluctance to commence it was followed by the earliest and strongest
manifestations of a disposition to arrest its progress. The sword was
scarcely out of the scabbard before the enemy was apprised of the
reasonable terms on which it would be resheathed. Still more precise
advances were repeated, and have been received in a spirit forbidding
every reliance not placed on the military resources of the nation.

These resources are amply sufficient to bring the war to an honorable
issue. Our nation is in number more than half that of the British Isles.
It is composed of a brave, a free, a virtuous, and an intelligent
people. Our country abounds in the necessaries, the arts, and the
comforts of life. A general prosperity is visible in the public
countenance. The means employed by the British cabinet to undermine it
have recoiled on themselves; have given to our national faculties a more
rapid development, and, draining or diverting the precious metals from
British circulation and British vaults, have poured them into those of
the United States. It is a propitious consideration that an unavoidable
war should have found this seasonable facility for the contributions
required to support it. When the public voice called for war, all knew,
and still know, that without them it could not be carried on through the
period which it might last, and the patriotism, the good sense, and the
manly spirit of our fellow-citizens are pledges for the cheerfulness
with which they will bear each his share of the common burden. To render
the war short and its success sure, animated and systematic exertions
alone are necessary, and the success of our arms now