two full regiments!
Second. That Secretary Floyd sent cannon to the Southern States. If he did the fact could not have been concealed, for their size and ponderous weight would have made it impossible to escape detection. The committee reported that there was no evidence that any cannon had been transported to the South. Secretary Floyd may have made an order for the transfer of guns, but it was never executed, and the officer in charge, Colonel Maynadier, said: ‘It never entered his mind that there could be any improper motive or object in the order.’
Third. The committee extended their inquiry into the circumstances under which Secretary Floyd ordered the removal of the old percussion and flint-lock muskets from the Springfield armory, where they had accumulated in inconvenient numbers. These arms were to be removed from time to time as may be most suitable for economy and transportation, and were to be distributed among the arsenals in proportion to their respective means of proper storage. These arms had been condemned by inspectors and were recommended to be sold, and they were advertised for sale, but the bids did not average $1.50 each and were not accepted. The committee did not, in the slightest degree, implicate Governor Floyd. Alas! what becomes of Senator Sherman's conjured up superior preparation for war and of General Scott's ‘good arms stolen?’ It is of a piece with the rifle pitfalls with which Northern papers, after the Bull Run escapade, in which some Republican congressmen shared, said the whole country was honeycombed. (See Reports of House Committee on Military Affairs, 9th January, 1861, and 18th February, 1861—Report No. 85.)
Secretary Floyd, by inheritance and conviction, was a thorough believer in State rights, but was opposed to secession and in favor of employing every right and proper expedient for averting or postponing it. His diary of the secret meetings and discussions of Mr. Buchanan's cabinet, during November, 1860, shows how averse he was to what he regarded the unwise and precipitate action of South Carolina. He addressed himself with great assiduity to the task of repressing the disposition manifested by the Southern States to take forcible possession of the forts and arsenals within their limits, and just prior to the time alleged for his distribution of public arms for aiding the secession movement he had published, in a Richmond paper, a letter which gained him high credit at the North for his boldness in rebuking the pernicious views of many in his own state. （Pollard's Lee and His Lieutenants, pp. 790-796, and Administration of Buchanan, p. 220.)
It may not be impossible that this persistent perversion of history is intended to shield the North from any reproach that might attach to her because of inability, with her immense superiority of military resources, to make an early conquest of the South. Besides the enormous means at her command in aid of commissary, quartermaster and ordnance departments, the North recruited her largely preponderant armies by purchased ‘Hessians’ from Europe, by enlistment of negroes, and by pecuniary stimulants for substitutes or volunteers offered by individuals and towns and states and the general government. The frauds practiced on the poor negroes in enlistments, in withholding bounties, in misapplication of what had been accumulated under orders of Butler and other generals, constitute a dark chapter in the mysterious history of the freedmen's bureau and in other unrecorded occurrences of the war. In 1870 was published the report of the commissioners on equalization of the municipal war debts by the general assembly of Maine. It contains curious and disgraceful matters of history in regard to the method of furnishing men for the army and navy. It transpires in that official comment that ‘substitute brokers’ did a business so important and profitable as to call for the formation of partnerships, which plied their ‘iniquitous transactions’ so adroitly and actively and fraudulently, as to obtain large sums, ‘hundreds of thousands of dollars,’ for men who were never reported for duty. This ‘wrong’ to the municipalities, ‘double and cruel wrong to the brave men lying in the trenches of the Appomattox and the James,’ occurred, says this merciless exposure, ‘when the army lay panting and exhausted in front of Petersburg,’ ‘when the government was calling loudly for recruits and new regiments,’ ‘when the gallant men were calling for help and succor,’ ‘when the conviction had been at last forced home upon the government that the people and the rebellion could only be subdued by being thoroughly whipped in its entrenched strongholds, and that to do this the army of freedom must be kept full and strong by constant reinforcements.’ (See Portland Advertiser, January 31, 1870.)
The South as a factor in the territorial expansion of the United States.
By William Roberson Garrett, A. M., Ph. D., Captain of First Virginia Regiment Artillery—subsequently in Forrest's Cavalry. Professor of American History, Peabody Normal College, Nashville, Tenn.
Chapter 1
In one important respect the history of the United States differs from the history—transcends the history—of any other great power of the world. Its boundaries have never receded. It is true, indeed, that some of the great powers have gained important territorial acquisitions, and have lost others; their boundary lines advancing and receding. At certain points of their history they may have claimed that their boundaries had never receded. This statement is now true of no great power except the United States.1
This is a fact of deep significance. It refutes the theory formerly so prevalent in Europe, and entertained to some extent in America, that a vast confederated republic could not possess cohesive force sufficient to hold its several parts together. Yet experience has shown that the United States, alone of all the great powers of the world, has preserved intact all the territory it has ever acquired.
In another respect American history is distinctive. Every great war in which the United States has ever been engaged, has been accompanied by a large acquisition of territory. Although we have grown to greatness, like ‘the great robber, Rome,’ by successive wars and successive acquisitions of territory, yet these wars have not been undertaken for the purpose of foreign conquest. Such a purpose has never been charged against the United States except in the case of the Mexican war.
These several wars, accompanied by acquisitions of territory, have been so interspersed along our history, that they form the true key of our chronology. Not the successive presidential administrations, bat the successive epochs of growth in the acquisition of territory, and the corresponding eras of development in the assimilation of the territory acquired, form the true principle upon which the history of the United States should be studied and written.
Whether these several wars and acquisitions shall be viewed as connected by the relation of cause and effect, or as forming a chain of remarkable coincidence, it is certain that an examination of the territorial map, in connection with a table of dates, will verify the chronological sequence.
1. The Revolutionary war, practically closing in 1781 with the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown, was formally terminated in 1783 by the treaty of Paris, confirming the title to our original territory, and defining its limits.
2. The war with France is sometimes omitted from the list of wars, on account of its short duration and its distance from American shores. War, however, actually existed, and had an important influence upon foreign relations: Peace was restored by the convention of September 30, 1800. On the next day, October 1, 1800, France acquired Louisiana, by retrocession from Spain. April 30, 1803, Louisiana was ceded to the United States.
3. Our next war, growing out of the purchase of Louisiana, and a logical sequence of the transaction, was the second war with Great Britain, closing in 1815 with the brilliant battle of New Orleans. As a corollary, came the complications with Spain and the Indian wars leading up to the treaty of Washington, made between John Quincy Adams and Don Luis de Onis, February 22, 1819. By this treaty the United States acquired Florida, and the cession of all ‘rights, claims and pretensions’ of Spain to the territory of Oregon.
4. Next came the Mexican war, preceded in 1845 by the acquisition of Texas, and followed in 1848 by the Mexican cessions under the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, and in 1853 by the Gadsden purchase. In 1846, the treaty with Great Britain decided the northern boundary of Oregon.
5. Last came the Civil war, fought among ourselves,