![[Abraham Lincoln] ([Cincinnati : Strobridge & Co.,] c1877 Oct. 12.; LOC: LC-DIG-ppmsca-19241)](https://www.bluegrayreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/19241r.jpg)
getting his way as long as the people submit
in the martial month of March
This Democrat paper in the Finger Lakes region sure didn’t wear rose-colored glasses as it responded to President Lincoln’s March 14, 1864 call for 200,000 more men for the military.
From a Seneca County, New York newspaper in March 1864:
200,000 More Men Wanted.
The President has issued a call for 200,000 more men, in addition to those already called into the field. A war of the magnitude of ours cannot be carried on without blood and treasure, and just so long as the people submit to the sacrifice, just so long will our rulers continue this fierce and bloody civil strife. It seems to us that at no time since the commencement of hostilities has national affairs worn a gloomier aspect than to-day. The recent campaigns, which were sounded with so much zest as certain to seal the doom of the rebellion, have all terminated ingloriously, if not disastrously. Our armies are everywhere confronted with overwhelming forces of the enemy. Privateers are destroying our commerce without molestation, corporations and municipalities are being crippled by taxation, and ruin everywhere stares us in the face. The administration is continually breaking to the national hope the promise it breathes to the national ear. For three weary years the record of the government has been a record of cheering predictions on the one hand, of soul-distressing failures on the other. facts have been misstated, important events have been concealed, falsehoods have been invented, all to deceive a credulous and forbearing people. At no time have our rulers risen to the dignity of Statesmen. While the nation is reeling and tottering like a drunken man, they seem all-absorbed in schemes of power, patronage and partisan success. – They look upon the war, and its train of dire calamities, as the means of perpetuating their own power, regardless of the dangers which threaten the very existence of the nation. What care they for the sufferings of the people, or the condition of the country, so long as the war contributes to their aggrandizement, and ends in the establishment of a despotism, both sure and irrevocable?
recruiting in New York City, Frank Leslie’s March 19, 1864
It is written that in ancient Rome Martius “marked a return to the active life of farming, military campaigning, and sailing.”
