If the Government of the United States had, since the close of the war, expended annually upon the mercantile marine one-fifth of the amount that has been expended upon the Navy, our ships would have covered every sea, and the Navy would have grown of itself.
Blaine critiques government spending priorities, suggesting that greater investment in the mercantile marine would have strengthened the Navy.
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Observing men in the loyal States regarded such a policy not only as weak and maudlin, but as utterly insufficient and assuredly dangerous to the future safety of the Government.
Emboldened by the support of the National Administration, the Southern leaders believed that they could carry their designs through, and, instead of being restrained by the protest or the advice of Republicans, they chose with apparent…
He was a lawyer in full practice, a man of the highest integrity, without fear and without reproach.
He had placed himself in a position from which he could not with grace retreat, and to go forward in which was still further to blight his hopes of promotion in his party.
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