Burlington, August 17, 1861.
I have received your favor of the 15th instant, in which you
congratulate me upon my return to the State, and invite me to address the
people of this city, at such time and place as I may designate, on the
important questions now before the country, involving the existence of the
Government.
I appreciate, as I ought, the kind feeling that prompted
this invitation, and return you my sincere thanks for it. I would address you
at any time and at any place, if I supposed I could communicate a particle of
information not already in the possession or within the reach of every citizen
of the State. I could only say in many words, what I now say in a few, that it
seems to me that there is no safe alternative before us, but to give a firm and
ardent support to the Government in its attempt to put down insurrection and
rebellion. More than any State in this Confederacy, Iowa should resist the
pretended right of a State to secede from it. Our position in the centre of the
continent, without foreign commerce, dependent upon other States for our
markets and for our means for transportation to reach them, would soon, if the
right to destroy the Union by the secession of the States be conceded, place us
in the character of a dependent and conquered province. We need, and must have,
at whatever cost, a permanent government and unrestricted access to the
Atlantic Ocean and to the Gulf of Mexico. There must be no foreign soil between
us and our markets.
As one of the Representatives of Iowa in the Federal
Congress, I have sought to give expression by my votes to what I believe to be
the opinions of the people of the State, and have uniformly voted all the men,
money, ships, and supplies, that were asked for. In doing so, I have not only
expressed what I believed to be their wishes, but I have acted upon my own
convictions of duty. I shall continue to do so until this unholy war shall be
brought to a successful conclusion.
The public debt that this war will impose upon us will
appall some and perhaps dampen the patriotism of some. Most erroneous
impressions, however, seem to prevail as to the magnitude of our present
indebtedness, and that which we are likely to create. The entire public
indebtedness of this country on the 6th instant, the day Congress adjourned,
was a hundred and eleven million dollars, most of which was inherited from the
preceding Administration, and the estimated expenses of the next year, for
military, naval, and civil purposes, were less than three hundred million
dollars, less than the annual expenses of Great Britain in a time of profound
peace. In connection with the aggregate of these two sums let us remember that
England paid eight thousand five hundred million dollars to carry on her wars
with the first Napoleon. She was contending for her commercial rights, and the
result showed that her money was well expended: we are not only contending for
our commercial rights, but we seek to uphold and perpetuate the best Government
ever known among men.
Foreigners call us, with great truth, the most impatient
people on the earth. This natural impatience is greatly increased by our present
troubles. We all want peace restored and business revived, and most of us
believe that a permanent peace can only be established by the victorious arms
of our soldiers. Our anxieties in this regard are very liable to cause us to do
great injustice to the Government and to ourselves also. We clamor for
victories, forgetting that the most thorough preparation is necessary to
achieve them. We forget the condition of the country four months ago, and ask
that that shall be done in a week which requires months of arduous labor to
perform. Very few fully appreciate the difficulties by which the President of
the United States found himself surrounded, when he assumed power on the 4th of
March last. Many of the Executive Departments had recently been under the control
of traitors. The army had been dispersed and demoralized, and many of the most
trusted and prominent officers were disloyal. Our vessels-of-war were scattered
upon foreign and remote stations. The Departments were full of spies and
traitors. The public armories had been plundered and their contents delivered
to the rebels. The President was without an army, without a navy, without arms
or munitions of war, and with enemies within and without. In this condition of
things, and after an almost uninterrupted peace of fifty years, he was called
upon to organize in a few weeks five armies, each of them larger than any that
had ever been marshaled on this continent, and to improvise a navy with which
to blockade a coast greater in extent than that which England was unable to
blockade with more than four hundred vessels-of-war in 1812-’14. That there
have been mistakes committed in the selection of agents and officers cannot be
denied, but, that there has been any lack of energy or of devotion to the cause
of the country, it seems to me that no fail man who examines the subject will
assert. Few persons comprehend all the labor, the time, and the perplexities
involved in furnishing clothing, arms, transportation, stores and pay for four
hundred and fifty thousand men, and in purchasing or building, manning, arming,
and equipping two hundred vessels-of-war by a Government whose credit was
impaired, whose armories had been destroyed, and whose munitions of war had
been stolen, and to do all this in the space of three months.
It becomes us to be hopeful and patient, bearing in mind
that the authorities in Washington are resolved that their preparation for the
conflict shall correspond with the magnitude of the conspiracy they are
compelled to encounter.
You say, gentlemen, that you address me without distinction
of party, and I find among the signatures appended to your letter the names of
many to whom I have always been politically opposed. Permit me to say that the
time has arrived when I am anxious to forget all party names, and party
platforms, and party organizations, and to unite with anybody and everybody in
an honest, ardent, and patriotic support of the Government — not as a party
Government with a Republican at its head, but as the national Government,
ordained by and for the benefit of the whole people of the country.
SOURCE: William Salter, The Life of James W. Grimes,
p. 147-50
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