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 Stat