"By these means the War was to be kept in the Border States, regardless
of our interests, until an exhausted Treasury should render it necessary
to send the tax-gatherer among our people, to take the little that might
be left them from the devastations of War.
"They then expected a clamor for Peace by us, resulting in the
interference of France and England, whose operatives in the meantime
would be driven to want, and whose aristocracy have ever been ready to
welcome a dissolution of the American Union.
"This cunningly-devised plan for securing a Gulf-Confederacy, commanding
the mouths of the great Western rivers, the Gulf of Mexico, and the
Southern Atlantic ocean, with their own territory unscathed by the
horrors of war, and surrounded by the Border States, half of whose
population would be left in sympathy with them, for many years to come,
owing to the irritations to which I have alluded, has, so far, succeeded
too well.
"In Missouri they have already caused us to lose a third or more of the
Slaves owned at the time of the last census. In addition to this, I can
make no estimate of the vast amount of property of every character that
has been destroyed by Military operations in the State.
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