The Shasta courier., 1864-01-09
Lessons Taught by War.

gigantic conspiracy of the leaders Of the
slave aristocraey of the South. Having main.
tanned control of nearly every department or
CUR government for over thirty years, and all
the time secretly preparing for the time when
they thought it safe to strike fatal blow
a;.ans; republican form of government,
and establish upon its ruins monarchy. that
would be more congenial to the tastes of the
slave propagandists, and having convenient
tool in James Buchanan, surrounded as he
was by his Cabinet Of conspirators, who fall
SIZED their oaths to the Constitution in al
most every particular, thev had prostituted
the government to their hellish purposes, and
left it without any of the powers of resist
ance, except the latent patriotism of the peo
pie of the North, which still burnt as bright
ly in the hearts of the masses as it did in the
breasts of our Revolutionary fathers.
When the present Administration was in
augurat~ d, it found the Government without
an army or navy, with the treasury bank
rupt, with no implements of war in the arsen-
ais of the North with which an attack upon
the capital could be resisted with any hope
of success. Such were the state of affairs at
Washington on the 4th of March, 1851. On
that day Abraham Lincoln took upon himself
the same oath to support the Constitution
Of the United States that all his predecessors
had taken before him. How well he has full
filled the obligations of that oath let the his
tory of the last three eventful years estab-
lish. Beset on every hand with open or cov-
ert traitors in every department of the gov
ernment, with the ordinances of secession al
ready passed by the conspirators of seven
States of the Union, with formidable army
menacng the capital, and another laying
siege 20 Fort Sumter, he found action by the
strong arm of the military power, vested in
him by the Constitution, necessary to repel
the attack on the Government, and he ac-
cordingly summoned to his aid volunteer
force of seventy-fve thousand good and loyal
men from the North, who came up to defend
the capital of the Nation, and to maintain
the honor of the American people at time
of their utmost peril.
The fast accumulating events from that
time to the present have all passed into histo-
ry, with no dshonor to the American people
as great and leading nation of the world.
One of the leading lessons taught in this
eventful period is the entire revolution in the
system of maratime warfare throughout the
world. The genius of Ericsson, which pro-
duced the little Monitor that defeated the
ponderous Merrimac in Hampton Roads, es
tabished the fact that vessels could be made
impregnable to projectiles from any known
implement of war, and demonstrated that
hereafter iron vessels must rule the seas, and
that the nation possessing the greatest num-
Der of these powerful vessels. when armed
with guns of immense calibre, under skillful
rights against any known powers. As yet
our Navy is mistress of the situation.
Turning from the formidable powers of our
Navy, we see unprecedented strides made IN
the invention of ordnance of heavy calibre
and long range, and what looked like an i'm
possibility at the commencement of the re-
bellion, the genius of our country has de
monstrated to be a fact, and now proiectles of
immense power are readily thrown distance
of FIVE miles, as easily as they could hereto
fore be thrown a distance of two thousand
yards.
But that which is of far greater importance
to us as nation. is the establishing of the
power of the Government to enforce the draft
for the purpose Of filling up our armies to
that point necessary to render them invincl-
ble While the South has been enforcing a
merciless conscription to fill up her deeimated
armies. sparing neither youth nor o d
age. our Government has only resorted to a
just and equalized levy upon all the States,
which has been found equal to the emergen
cy, and under..th the humane system of allowing
substitutes to take the place of those who may
be drafted. our people have yielded, with a
few exceptions, a cheerful obedience to this
necessary law Never before have the Amer
lean people been called upon to prove the
power of the Government. and place our re-
publican institutions upon so firm basis, as
the enforcement of the draft by the will and
consent of the people. Here we see the ex-
alted character of the American people, and
it is we'll that now, during our domestic diff
ficulties. this power should be asserted and
maintained. Foreign governments, locking
to this feature in ours. will in future see our
true position, and consider well the question
whether it were polite or safe to meddle with
our affairs, with the full knowledge before
them that every man capable of bearing
arms may be brought into the army of the
Republic to defend its flag and maintain its
honor.
Taking into consideration the financial con-
dition of the United States Government after
three years of devastating civil war, with un-
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