The Daily Dispatch: March 3, 1865., [Electronic resource]

The New York Tribune expresses its confidence in the "fighting muscle" of General Sherman's army. A few years work great changes. Who would have expected, some years ago, ever to see such language of the ring in the editorial columns of the New York Tribune? We should as soon have looked for it in an address of William Penn. We were led to believe by the old Tribune that wars and fighting had come to an end, and that the millennium was at hand. And now, not even the New York Herald exhibits more fighting gusto and science than the New York Tribune, which once was full of excellent Quaker reading, and gladdened the heart of Elihu Burritt with its humane and persistent antagonism to war.

But the Tribune, it must be confessed, and all other philanthropists of the peace order, who once abounded not only on this continent but in Europe, neither understood the nature of mankind in general, nor their own in particular, when they ignored the inextinguishable instincts of the tiger in man. How long is it since Peace Congresses were held, not only in New York, but in Paris and London? Yes, under the very shadow of Napoleon's tomb, Victor Hugo and other eloquent enthusiasts hailed with raptures the approaching advent of universal peace. In the great capital where Nelson and Wellington sleep, and where an exhibition of "fighting muscle" will bring together a greater crowd any day than the most eloquent address from the hustings or the pulpit, it was proclaimed by benevolent and really sensible men that the time when mankind fought and slew each other like wild beasts had passed away forever. The last echoes of this millennial oratory had scarcely passed away before there came the old snarling of the wild beasts from the Crimea, and after that the noise of the death-grapple from Italy, and, finally, the blended and prolonged cry, roar, shriek and yell of a whole menagerie let loose in America.

What has become of the European philanthropists we cannot say. Judging, however, from the transformation of their race on this continent, we expect, in the event of a European war, to see all the orators of the Peace Congresses with cocked hats on their heads and swords by their sides. Human nature as described in the inspired record, and human nature as imagined by philanthropists, are evidently different things.