The very last words Lincoln delivered on the afternoon before the
assassination--last of those great utterances that for six or seven years
electrified and enlightened half the world--were a message of suggestion
and encouragement to the miners of the Rockies. Schuyler Colfax was going
thither and was paying his final call at the White House. Lincoln said
to him:
“Mr. Colfax, I want you to take a message from me to the miners whom you
visit. I have very large ideas of the mineral wealth of our nation. I
believe it is practically inexhaustible. It abounds all over the western
country, from the Rocky mountains to the Pacific, and its development
has scarcely commenced. During the war, when we were adding a couple of
million dollars every day to our national debt, I did not care about
encouraging the increase in the volume of our precious metals; we had
the country to save first. But now that the rebellion is overthrown, and
we know pretty nearly the amount of our national debt, the more gold and
silver we mine, we make the payment of that debt so much easier. Now, I
am going to encourage that in every possible way. We shall have hundreds
of thousands of disbanded soldiers, and many have feared that their
return home in such great numbers might paralyze industry by furnishing
suddenly a greater supply of labor than there will be a demand for. I am
going to try to attract them to the hidden wealth of our mountain ranges,
where there is room enough for all. Immigration, which even the war has
not stopped, will land upon our shores hundreds of thousands more from
over-crowded Europe. I intend to point them to the gold and silver that
wait for them in the West. Tell the miners for me, that I shall promote
their interests to the best of my ability, because their prosperity is
the prosperity of the nation; and we shall prove in a few years that we
are indeed the treasury of the world.”