From Washington.
[special Correspondence of the Dispatch.]
Washington, Feb. 11, 1861.
If a man had always about him as much change as the weather in Washington has, he would be mighty comfortable.
Two or three days ago, the thermometer was below zero; and now it is moist and warm enough to start the willows to sprouting and the frogs to crosking.
The news of the election of Jefferson Davis and Stephens, and the tenor of the dispatch outlining the future course of the Provisional Government of the Southern Confederacy, creates a favorable impression on all sides.--An English gentleman remarked yesterday that the effect would be most happy abroad, for the Foreign Powers have always believed that the Gult States would re-open the African slave trade, repudiate the public debt, and play the rascal generally.
The President says that when the ambassadors of the Southern Confederacy come on to demand the forts and arsenals now held by the Federal forces and to account fairly for those seized by the several States, the case will be very different from what it has heretofore been.
He did not say that Congress would recognize the new Confederacy, but the tone of his remarks justified that inference.
This I have from un-doubted authority.
As I write a beautiful turnout is passing to Sixth street. One of the companies of flying Artillery is making a display for the benefit of our citizens.
Each cannon is drawn by six horses, and the caissons by the same number.
The officers are mounted on high-mettled, showy chargers, and all the horses are in fine condition.
It is a very pretty spectacle.
About a thousand soldiers, mostly of foreign birth, as their faces show, are now in this place.
Their presence excites a good deal of indignation in the breasts of Virginians temporarily sojourning here.
The citizens, however, are well pleased with them.
The border State proposition, which the Peace Congress, it is said, will adopt, is far below the Crittenden amendment.
It allows neither Congress nor the Territorial Legislature to interfere with slavery.
Virtually, it outlaws slavery, and places it in a much were condition than it now is under the Dred Scott decision.
But this Border State proposition will hardly pass Congress.
A National Convention is the next deception to keep the border States in. It will take two years to call this Convention, and get its sets before the people.
Meantime the accessions to the Republican party will give them the three-fourths necessary to abolish slavery in the States.
But they will hardly be mad enough to do that.
While Virginia is waiting to see what this Convention will do, the free ports opened at, the South will be drawing all the trade from her. New York will continue to suck her capital, the candle will be burning at both ends, and the issue of an ignomanious choice of an Abolition, in preference to a Southern Confederacy, will be impoverishment and decay.
Nor must we neglect to take into account the stampede of slave property from Virginia into the Southern Confederacy, which will continue until it is stopped by the Southern Congress.
The drain created by the expulsion of this property will be serious indeed.
Two coercion bills are now before the House, with a fair prospect of becoming laws at an early day. One is a sort of second edition of the Boston post bill; the other authorizes the President to call out the whole militia of the States remaining in the Union, to assist in enforcing the laws, recapturing the forts, &c. Under its provisions, the people of Virginia will be compelled to take up arms against the South, or else to assume the attitude of rebels.
Charlotte Cushman will perform all this week at the theatre.
Zed, 