The Tribute Book - A Record of the Munificence, Self-Sacrifice and Patriotism of the American People, During the War for the Union #266349

Book contains the story of seventy millions of dollars. Ordinarily, Millions do not'ffurnish an interesting or an instructive theme; he who writes their history has generally little to tell but a tale of selfishness and greed, or at best, of dogged in dustry or stubborn self-denial. It is rare that he who collects the chronicles of dollars and cents, pounds, shillings and pence, -can lay before the reader such a record of self-sacrifice as the following pages embody. These are not the annals of mercan tile shrewdness, of wealth heaped up by toil or avarice, of riches painfully gathered by patience or speedily swept together by genius or fortune: they are the records of money given, not money earned; of a labor of love, not of labor for hire and salary; of purse-strings unloosed, of the latch-string hang ing free, of self-assessment, of tribute rendered always willingly, often unasked. This volume, in a word, is a digest — the materials for twenty such having been condensed into one — of the ways and means by which the American people, having been taxed to pay three thousand millions of dollars for the prosecution of a war — of their own accord, without tax or toll.