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Seven of the disorganized States ratified it, and having by that act, by the adoption of State Constitutions approved by Congress, and by the election of National Senators and Representatives, complied with the prescriptions of Congress, they took their places.
as resuscitated members of the Union.1
Although the country for a considerable time was agitated by the throes of civil war, peace, quiet and unexampled prosperity abound.
The Republic has entered upon a new and more glorious era. In its dealings with its domestic enemies, the Government, conscious of its strength, has been lenient and magnanimous beyond all precedent, toward those who attempted to destroy the Union, and has thereby won the applause and admiration of civilized men. Of the thousands of the citizens of the Republic, who consciously and willingly committed “treason against the United.
States,” according to the prescriptions of the Constitution,2 only one had been punished for the crime,3 and one other (Jefferson Davis) had been indicted when this record was closed.4
The developed and undeveloped resources of the country, and its actual visible wealth, are evidently so abundant and available, and the irrepressible energies of the people are so great, that the enormous debt created by the business of suppressing the Rebellion is not regarded as a very serious burden upon the industry of the nation.
That debt amounts, in round numbers, to almost two thousand five hundred million dollars--a debt not nearly so, large, in proportion to the population, as the inhabitants of the thirteen original States were subjected to at the close of the old War for Independence, when the resources of the country were almost undeveloped and unknown.
It will be cheerfully paid by a grateful people, in accordance with the pledges.
given in the name of the Republic.5 The nation having been purified and. strengthened by the Civil War and its results, and placed upon the sure: foundations of Truth and Justice, may we not reasonably believe that the fiat has gone forth from God, Esto Perpetua?
1 These were North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Arkansas.
2 See clause 1, section 8, article III.
3 Mumford, hung by Butler, at New Orleans. See page 851, volume II.
4 See page 579.
5 On the first of August, 1865, the actual debt of the Republic, considering back pay, bounties, overdue contracts, transportation, and a variety of other expenses incident to the closing of the war, since liquidated and unliquidated, amounted to $8,287,788,329. At the end of the last fiscal year (June 80, 1868), the National Debt was $2,488,000,000, showing the remarkable fact, that in the space of about three years since the close of the war, that debt had been reduced $802,788,829, or more than one-fourth of its full amount. At that rate of reduction, the entire debt may be paid off in the space of ten years.
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