August Belmont, Banker
Galushaw Grow, speaker of the House, July 4, 1861:
"No flag alien to the sources of the Mississippi river will ever float over its mouths till its waters are crimsoned with human gore; and not one foot of American soil can ever be wrenched from the jurisdiction of the Constitution of the United States until it is baptized in fire and blood."
"My firm conviction is, that any other solution to our present difficulties than a reconstruction of but one government over all the states of our confederacy would entail upon us and our children an inheritance of the most fearful consequences, which would end in the utter disintegration and ruin of the whole country." ---August Belmont, July 20, 1862.
And Belmont didn't just write, he got on the boat, sailed to London and Paris and told everyone who listened to leave the North alone; as result when the vote came down in the London parliament whether to break the blockade, many changed their views and the majority voted against the breaking of the blockade.
Representative John Wentworth (1815-1888) (R) Illinois ---he drank at least a pint of whiskey each day--- said in the House on March 15, 1866:--
ReplyDelete"With cotton restored to loyalty and our currency restored to honesty, worse calamities might befall our country than negotiating its bonds abroad, and especially if it could be done at five per cent."
he drank at least a pint of whiskey each day
DeleteGood man!