Go still farther. From the time gold was discovered in California up to the outbreak of the War of the Rebellion, nine hundred millions of gold were dug from the mines of California and Oregon. Where did it go? The great bulk of it went into storehouses and manufactories and vaults of the North. The South was sparsely represented in California and Oregon in the early days. We repeat that when the war broke out, the great bulk of the yellow metal was behind the Union army. Who don't recognize that it was a great power? Even more than that, it was a controlling power. The Nation was to be tried as never before. Human slavery was the prize for which the South contended, while human freedom soon asserted itself, despite all opposition, as a contending force in the North. But the wisest were in doubt as to results. They could not see how it was possible that "the sum of all villainies" could be obliterated. In the East and the North and the West, the boys in blue flocked to the standard, and bayonets gleamed everywhere. The plow was left in the furrow, and the hum of the machine shop was not heard. The fires in the furnaces and forges went out, and multitudes were in despair over the mighty struggle at hand. The Union might have been saved without the wealth of gold of California and Oregon; it might have proved victorious, even if the two great loyal States of the Pacific had been in the hands of strangers or enemies, but they were behind the loyal Union army. And the men marched and fought and sung-- "In the beauty of the lilies, Christ was born across the sea, With a glory in his bosom, that transfigures you and me; As he died to make men holy, let us die to make men free, While God is marching on," as they marched, leaving graves upon every mountain side and in every valley. Appomattox was reached, and lo, the chains dropped from the limbs of six million slaves, and "The flag of beauty and glory" floated from Lake to Gulf and from Ocean to Ocean, in truth as in song-- "O'er the land of the free, And the home of the brave." [Illustration: WHITMAN COLLEGE, WALLA WALLA, WASHINGTON.] Again, older readers will remember with what fear and trembling they opened their morning papers for many months, fearing to read that England had accorded "belligerent rights" to the Confederacy. They will have a vivid recollection of the eloquent orator, Henry Ward Beecher, as he plead, as no other man could, the cause of the Union in English cities. He was backed up by old John Bright, the descendants of Penn, Gurney and Wilberforce, and the old-time enemies of human slavery. But it took them all to stem the tide. At one time it even seemed that they had won over Gladstone to their interests.