before the whirlwind, and only defeat and disgrace will settle upon his
banners.

Again, the stimulus which this contest has applied to warlike invention
has already placed us in that respect far ahead of the most warlike
nation on earth. France has hitherto been known as the great originator
in all military science: probably she will yet, for many years, retain
the palm in the province of tactics and executive skill. But as an
originator and perfecter of the engines and defences of war, America has
already robbed her of her crown, and stands to-day unsurpassed. No
greater proof is needed of our superiority in this respect than the fact
that in two short years of civil strife we have revolutionized the whole
art of war as it has existed for ages, rendering absurd the maxims and
useless the experience of the olden days, while filling their places
with systems and theories whose practical results are so clear as to
overwhelmingly sustain the new order of things, and compel not only the
admiration but the support and adoption of the onlooking world. The
antiquated weapons of warfare are harmless to-day, and their places are
supplied by new and more destructive engines, which Europe must perforce
adopt in self-defence, and thus bow to the genius of American invention,
whereby the old is so entirely and radically supplanted by the new, that
the Napoleons and Wellingtons of a past age would be but tyros in our
battles of to-day. The lesson of the Monitors is not the only one Europe
has learned from us within the last two years. And we have more to teach
her yet, more marvels yet to be evolved from that inexhaustible mine of
invention--the Yankee brain. For as long as the war shall last,
furnishing not only a promise of a golden harvest in the future, but a
present and substantial support to inventive genius, at the same time
that a new stimulus is being constantly supplied by the events and
experience of each succeeding day, the work will go on, and weapon after
weapon, engine after engine, will be thrown into the world's great
market, constantly approaching nearer to the perfection of destructive
power. And as there is no poison without its antidote, so the
originating faculties of the American mind will be as fully exerted in
the creation of defences against those very engines of destruction.
Armed thus at all points, and containing within ourselves not only a
source of future supply, but even the very fount of originating f