f the war on the land and on the water. The recent annual
report of Mr. Chase, though chiefly confined to a simple statement of
facts and figures, is like the account of some great victorious
campaign, submitted by the unassuming officer who conducted it. The
achievements of the Treasury are in fact the greatest of all our
victories; they underlie and sustain the prowess of our armies, while
they signalize the confidence and the patriotism of our whole people.
Without them the peril of the Union would have been infinitely enhanced,
and perhaps it would have been wholly impossible to conquer the
rebellion. There was a narrow and difficult path to tread in order to
avoid national bankruptcy; it was necessary within three years to raise
fifteen hundred millions of dollars, and a single false step might have
doubled or trebled the amount even of that enormous demand. How often
has intelligent patriotism trembled to think that the failure of our
finances would involve the probable futility of our sacred war for the
Union, with all its tremendous sacrifices of life and property!

Nobly have the people sustained their Government; with a wise instinct
of confidence, they have freely risked their money, as their lives, in
support of their own holy cause. This confidence at home has given us
unbounded strength abroad. Nor do the facts in the least diminish the
credit fairly due to the Secretary, whose great merit is to have
organized a system so well calculated to attract the confidence of the
people and to inspire them with a sense of perfect security in trusting
their fortunes to the keeping of the nation for its help and support in
the hour of supreme peril. It is the highest evidence of wise
statesmanship to be able thus to arouse a nation to the cheerful
performance even of its obvious duty: this has been accomplished by Mr.
Chase, under the embarrassment of repeated failures on the part of those
who had in special charge to defend and promote our noble cause. The
entire merit of this grand success can only be adequately estimated by
considering how slight a mistake of judgment or want of faithful courage
in conducting these momentous affairs would have thrown our finances
into inextricable confusion. Our own experience immediately before the
war, when there was no adequate conception of the extent of the trouble
about to come upon us, shows how easily the public credit may be shaken
or destroyed by incompetent or dishonest a