The uprising of the country.
Let no one feel that our present troubles are deplorable, in view of the majestic development of nationality and patriotism which they have occasioned.
But yesterday we were esteemed a sordid, grasping, money-loving people, too greedy of gain to cherish generous and lofty aspirations.
To-day vindicates us from that reproach, and demonstrates that, beneath the scum and slag of forty years of peace, and in spite of the insidious approaches of corruption, the fires of patriotic devotion are still intensely burning.
The echoes of the cannon fired at
Sumter have barely rolled over the
Western hills ere they are drowned in the shouts of indignant freemen, demanding to be led against the traitors who have plotted to divide and destroy the country.
Party lines disappear — party cries are hushed or emptied of meaning — men forget that they were Democrats or Republicans, in the newly aroused and intense consciousness that they are
Americans.
The ordeal now upon us may cost our country many lives and much treasure, but its fruits will be richly worth them all. But few weeks have elapsed since babbling demagogues were talking of an Eastern, a Central, a North-western, and a Pacific, as well as a South-western and a Border-State Confederacy: let them now be silent a little, and note the cost of dividing the
Union barely once before they talk further of shivering it into five or six fragments.
The experience will be conclusive.
Let but this trial be surmounted, and no one will again plot the dissolution of the
Union for at least half a century.
We feel confident that the
President's call for seventy-five thousand militia from all the loyal States will be responded to within thirty days by proffers of more than one hundred thousand from the
Free States alone, and that this number can be doubled upon a mere suggestion that the additional number is desired.
Any number that may be required will step forward as fast as they may be called for, even though it should be judged best to confront the Secessionists on their frontier with half a million men.
But the
Rebels also can muster men enough, while they are as yet far ahead of us in arms and munitions; their weak point is that of finance.
With a notorious and abusive champion of Repudiation at their head, they cannot borrow a dollar outside of their own limits, and their first loan of fifteen millions will exhaust the resources of their banks.
That sum will just about suffice to put one hundred thousand men in the field in fighting array; it will be utterly exhausted before they shall have been two months on foot.
Their banks are already two. thirds broken, and their notes selling slowly in our Northern cities at fifty per cent. of their face: whence are their next funds to be obtained?
How are they to defend their two thousand miles of mainlyexposed sea-coast and navigable inlets against an undisputed naval ascendency, without more men and unlimited supplies of money?
It is a plain case that they must hurry matters or succumb, and that they must make an immediate dash at our weakest point, the
Federal Metropolis.
If
Jeff. Davis and
Beauregard are not on the
Potomac within sixty days, their rebellion will stand exposed a miserable failure.
They must back their allies in
North Carolina and
Virginia by a prompt display of force and daring, to which end all their energies must first be directed.
We do not believe they will even stop to reduce
Fort Pickens if it should be so held as to compel them to besiege it in form.
They cannot wait; we can; and they will show that they cannot, by a speedy advance on
Washington, unless they shall despair of success, and desist from serious effort altogether.
It is cheering then, to know that
Washington will be defended by ten thousand men before the close of this week, and that the number will be doubled the next, and quadrupled the week after.
That will be enough until we have tidings that
Virginia has seceded and
Jeff. Davis is this side of the
Roanoke: thenceforth the number of volunteers pouring into
Washington for its defence, will be limited only by the ability of the
Northern and Western railroads to convey them.
We have a civil war on our hands — there is no use in looking away from the fact.
For this year, the chief business of the
American people must be proving that they have a Government, and that Freedom is not another name for Anarchy.
Hundreds of thousands must be temporarily drawn away from peaceful and productive avocations until this point is settled — drawn away just at the time when labor is wanted to sow and plant for the ensuing harvest.
But those who will be left behind must work the harder and plant the more, since years of war are usually years of dear bread.
Farmers! employ all the help you can pay, and put in all the crops for which you can seasonably and thoroughly prepare the ground, for a season of scarcity is probably at hand.
Let each do his best toward preparing for it.
