Whitelaw Reid: “Why mourn over our present course as a departure from the policy of the fathers?”

Here was the opportunity for a statesman to grasp.

Above all, if there is a trace of politics in their work, or of seeking for political effect at home, they will fail, and deserve to fail.

Fully believing the debts of their Rebel Government legal and just, they were prepared to repudiate them at a hint from Washington.

Extravagant living left nearly every planter enormously in debt when the war came.