XLIII.

The Great Republic still moves on in the Consciousness of its own Security.

THERE is no better way to test the integrity and power of a man or a commonwealth than to watch them in periods of trouble.* At those times only does true character come out.

* In the excitements of a great civil war and the struggle for national existence, our Government still shows a sublime faith in its perpetuity, and perfects its plans for the agricultural progress of the nation. The sword and the ploughshare, the spear and the pruning-hook, have worked together upon the problem of civil liberty.

No appeal has been made by the Government for the planting of extra crops to supply its soldiers in the field, or to gain by exchanges with foreign nations the means of carrying on the war. The Government has looked calmly and confidently to the future. This faith has been strikingly manifested in the organization of the Department of Agriculture during the darkest period of the war, and in appropriations for carrying it on, small, to be sure, compared with the magnitude of the interest, but increased from $60,000 (usually given to the Agricultural Division of the Patent Office) to $105,000 for the enlarged operations of the Department. No longer an appendage to a mere bureau, it has assumed the full dignity of a Department, and its establishment constitutes, on the part of our national legislators, a graceful recognition of the importance of agriculture, the first and most extended of our national labors. Its object is, to get and diffuse practical information upon agriculture; to perfect and put in operation a reliable system of statistics; to procure, propagate, and disseminate new and promising varieties of seeds and plants; to experiment in the acclimatizing of exotics of probable value to our rural industry; and to maintain a watchful guardianship over the interests of agriculture.

Nor is this the only benefit to the tillers of the soil, who furnish the sinews of war. The same Congress, in the same session, passed an act donating public lands to the several States and Territories, which provides

In this respect the order of nature seems to be reversed. The darkness of misfortune lights up the object, while the full noonday conceals it.

Neither men nor nations ever develop their native characteristics in times of florid prosperity. It is only when the storm comes that the individual, the oak, the ship, or the community show their real strength. Then there is and can be no concealment of weakness or defects. It seems to be a law of nature that every thing must pass through the crucible before its qualities can be determined. There is a Mint for Governments as well as for the precious metals. Governments pass through this Mint in civil revolutions, which either save or destroy them. What, then, is the surest test to apply to nations while they are going through foreign or civil wars? I would answer, How strong is their consciousness of security, and how do they prove it? By prosecuting their public works as in times of peace!

for colleges for the benefit of agriculture and the mechanic arts. It gives thirty thousand acres of land for every Representative and Senator in Congress, or more than ten millions of acres in all, for the establishment of an Agricultural College in each State which may accept the generous provision.

This initial step in aid of practical education is not the work of an old Government.

Thirty-five years ago, the annual average of our agricultural exports was fifty million dollars; when the war of the rebellion broke out, these exports were increased to nearly three hundred millions; and the astonishing fact is now manifested that, while the ports of the South are closed, and a million of laborers are withdrawn from the North, a vastly larger export has since been made of the products of loyal agriculture than ever before. The following exhibit of exports is illustrative of this remarkable increase :

This rule we learn from all the great nations of antiquity. The public edifices of the Asiatic empires, those of Egypt, Greece, and Rome, went on uninterrupted, their enduring structures were uninterrupted, in the midst of all their foreign wars and home convulsions.

It has been so with great modern nations. The Escurial of Madrid, St. Peter's at Rome, St. Paul's at London, the Duomo at Milan, the palaces of Paris, the wonderful edifices of Russia, all were founded, carried on, and completed in the midst of constant convulsions at home and abroad; and yet all these nations have either filled the full measure of civic greatness, or are now in the meridian of their power.

What corresponding signs do we discover in the United States during this terrible rebellion? Every sign of conscious strength.* No public work has been suspended, except

*On the 22d of April, 1863, in the chapel of the University of the City of New York, Hon. and General Henry Wilson, of Massachusetts (Chairman of the Military Committee of the Senate of the United States), who has procured the passage of the act incorporating a National Academy of Sciences, said,

"GENTLEMEN:-I hold in my hand the Act, passed in the closing hours of the Thirty-Seventh Congress, 'To incorporate the National Academy of Sciences.' In compliance with many kind requests, I am here to call the corporators to order. In rising to perform this agreeable task, I crave for a moment your indulgence.

"This Act, under which you have met to organize, incorporates in America, and for America, a national institution, whose objects, ranging over the illimitable fields of science, are limited only by the wondrous capacities of the human intellect. Such an institution has been for years in the thought and on the tongue of the devotees of science; but its attainment seemed far in the future. Now it is an achieved fact. Our country has spoken it into being in this 'dark and troubled night' of its history, and commissioned you, gentlemen, to mould and fashion its organization, to infuse into it that vital and animating spirit that shall win in the boundless domains of science the glittering prizes of achievement that will gleam forever upon the brow of the nation.

"When, a few months ago, a gentleman whose name is known and honored in both hemispheres expressed to me the desire that an academy of physical sciences should be founded in America, and that I would at least

from the exhaustion of appropriations through the villany or prodigality of that Administration which, through treason or imbecility, ushered in the rebellion.

On Mr. Lincoln's accession, the necessity of resuming these labors received early attention, and, the means being at once provided, they all went on. Among them were the Capitol, the Treasury Building, the Aqueduct, and other works of vast public utility, all of which were continued, and are going on now, day by day, with the steadiness of sun

make the effort to obtain such an act of incorporation for the scientific men of the United States, I replied that it would seem more fitting that some statesman of ripe scholarship should take the lead in securing such a measure, but that I felt confident that I could prepare, introduce, and carry through Congress a measure so eminently calculated to advance the cause of science and to reflect honor upon our country. I promptly assumed the responsibility, and, with such aid and suggestions as I could obtain, I prepared, introduced, and by personal effort with members of both Houses of Congress, carried through this Act of Incorporation, without even a division in either House.

"The suggestion was sometimes made that the nation is engaged in a fearful struggle for existence, and that the moment was not well chosen for such a measure. But I thought otherwise. I thought it just the fitting time to act. I wanted the savans of the Old World, as they turn their eyes hitherward, to see that, amid the fire and blood of the most gigantic civil war in the annals of nations, the statesmen and people of the United States, in the calm confidence of assured power, are fostering the elevating, purifying, and consolidating institutions of religion and benevolence, literature, art, and science. I wanted the men of Europe, who profess to see in America the failure of republican institutions, to realize that the people of the United States, while eliminating from their system that ever-disturbing element of discord bequeathed to them by the colonial and commercial policy of England, are cherishing institutions that elevate man and ennoble nations. The land resounds with the tread of armies, its bright waters are crimsoned and its fields reddened with fraternal blood.

"Patriotism surely demands that we strive to make this now discordant, torn, and bleeding nation one and indivisible. This National Academy of Sciences will, I feel sure, be now and hereafter another element of power to keep in their orbits, around the great central sun of the Union, this constellation of sovereign commonwealths."

rising. The matter will admit of some illustrations of the philosophy of the subject.

None but a few timid people have ever been afraid of this rebellion. Every just and good man has wept over it in bitter sorrow. But it has inspired no deep or lasting alarm among men of firmness, patriotism, and common sense. The calmness of the surface of our public and private life has been disturbed, but the deep fountain has still been sending forth unceasingly its crystal waters, speaking the language of the heart of the nation, which proclaims its unbroken faith in the eternity of the Republic.

The country came up to a level with its institutions,—to a level with its great historic acts. For some time our institutions had been superior to the acts of the people and their Administrations; but the all-engrossing cares and selfish interests of life had left the fortunes of the United States at the mercy of intriguing politicians.

But when the alarm-bell sounded, all true men sprung to their feet, and came to the rescue. Even Indians fight for our Government.*

While the descendants of the Anglo-Saxon are engaged in a heinous rebellion against a Government which stands a monument of human liberty and civilization, what a beautiful and undying tribute to that Government, and an endearing and imperishable memento of the fidelity of the sons of nature,-the red man,-is the page of history recorded below! Driven from his native hunting-grounds, to which he held an indisputable birthright, and compelled to seek new fields and new games, hunted and persecuted by the white man, cheated by false promises, his brain maddened and blood poisoned by the "fire-water," and almost beggared, depending upon the scanty allowance afforded by his trespassers, still his Indian instinct is not dead to his allegiance, and he now girds on the armor of the warrior and sheds his life-blood in defence of the Constitution and Government.

For some months preceding active hostilities between the North and the South, the loyal and true Cherokee and Creek Indians-appreciating the danger that was menacing our free institutions, which, while it had deprived them of their hunting-grounds, had placed in their hands the