troops and create a navy out
of its own materials; and now we will show the world how a free state
can maintain its army and navy out of its own resources; and if the
result proves--as it will prove--that our free institutions are the
safest, strongest, and best for the people in war as well as in peace,
then the great struggle we are now going through with will be worth more
to the true interests of humanity everywhere than all the battles which
have been fought since the dawn of the present century. For a hundred
years, openly or covertly, but without intermission, has war been going
on between despotism and freedom, with varied success, but on the whole
with a steady gain for freedom; and now here, on the same field where
it originated, is the long strife to be finally settled. On these same
fields the same freedom is to culminate in unquenchable splendor, or to
set forever, leaving mankind to grope in darkness and ignorance under
the misrule of despotic tyranny. We are in arms not only to suppress an
odious uprising of despotism against freedom within our own borders, but
to show by our example, to all the nations of the earth, what freedom is
and what freedom means.

In seeking aid of the money power, we go beyond the line where
patriotism gives us all we need, promptly and liberally, into the cold
region of selfishness, whose people are too much absorbed in adding to
and counting up their gains to be able to spare much time or thought on
country or freedom. No voluntary sacrifices to be expected here. What we
want we must buy, and pay for; it is only to see that we do not pay too
much for it. Selfish, timid, grasping, these people are a skittish set
to deal with. Nobody understands better the game of 'the spider and the
fly,' and they are as ready to play it with the state as with smaller
opponents, if the state will but let them. From his first visit to this
region, to the present time, our able Secretary of the Treasury was, and
continues to be, '_master of the position_.'

When the Secretary held his first sociable with the representatives of
the money power, neither he nor they had a very keen perception of what
they wanted of each other; the rebellion was not then developed in the
gigantic proportions it has since assumed; and it was hoped and
expected, with some show of reason, that two or three hundred millions
would be enough to put it down. This amount the power could and would
willingly furnish for a 'c