The Daily Dispatch: April 24, 1861., [Electronic resource]

The Blunders of Incompetency and Malice. The world are at a loss to know what ideas of statesmanship or what principles of policy govern the powers at Washington. From the hour they assumed the direction of affairs, there is not one single act of wisdom, of statesmanship, or of patriotism, that can be found in their whole conduct. They are strangers to all patriotic emotions; for there has not one single word escaped them which has touched the patriotic heart, or has excited a patriotic impulse in a single American bosom. They seem incapable of any act of genuine nobleness. Their action falls as coldly upon the country as the snow. Their words are as unfeeling as their policy is vengeful and cunning.

The demonstration upon Charleston disclosed the selfish and calculating counsels that actuate them. The manly course would have been the withdrawal of Anderson and the evacuation of Sumter. They had not the generosity or the courage to do that. They feared the clamor of the North, and they preferred to risk a hundred lives rather than risk the frowns of a ruthless faction. They sent around their fleet to Charleston merely as a feint, merely to make a demonstration of energy; when they knew that the certain consequence of their conduct would be to put every man's life in Sumter at hazard. That was the cold and cruel beginning of their Campaign against the South. It was enough to disgust every Union man in its whole borders with a cause which was so butchered and disgraced by its official managers.

Their concentrating, or attempting to concentrate, immense numbers of troops at Washington, is another act of cowardly selfishness which must greatly disgust even their own adherents and apologists. No one thought of molesting them in Washington until they invited molestation by their wicked and foolish call for seventy-five thousand troops to assemble there. The plainest considerations must have taught them that Virginia would not brook a formidable menace of that sort from an unscrupulous foe upon her very borders. If they had paid less attention to the flattering assurances of Hooks, and more to the real oracles of popular sentiment in Maryland, they might have anticipated the resistance that has risen up so suddenly and unexpectedly in that State. The consequence of this needless call for a vast army of men has been to make their dispersion and the taking of Washington a military and political necessity to both Maryland and Virginia.--The demonstration upon Charleston forced Virginia to secession. The call for seventy-five regiments has converted Maryland from a Union to a secession State. The occupation and fortification of Washington by so numerous an army, though in tended for their security, really places them in most imminent peril. It is said that Lincoln starts at the mention of Jeff.Davis or Wise, or Ben McCullogh, and that a body-guard of Kansas cut-throats' under the lead of Jim Lamb, the murderer, sleep every night in the East Room. He will soon find that Virginia has other names of terror for cowardly abolitionists, and that to be surrounded by cut-throats may put his own jugular in danger.

The marauding expedition which the Washington Administration sent to Norfolk was dictated by a spirit as cowardly as it was impotent. Why was Wright, an Army officer, sent upon an excursion of a naval vessel, under naval command, unless it was because of his officious suggestions of this reckless policy, early made and long persisted in, and his malignant zeal for burnings and destruction? What principles of elevated statesmanship could have dictated the burning of the best Navy-Yard belonging to the Government, and some of the finest vessels in the service? The Navy-Yard was unoccupied and undefended; and upon Mr. Lincoln's own theory, that there can be no secession, and that Virginia, and every part of her, is still under the Federal jurisdiction, this act was a plain levying of war upon the United States. Thus the President himself is guilty of high treason. What can be said of the policy of an Administration which, under the pretext of suppressing insurrection, deliberately puts itself into the position of levying war upon the United States? This proceeding at Norfolk is of valuable significance in one particular. It clearly reveals the animus of the Administration. It shows that they have no hope of further deceiving Virginia into the occupation of a neutral attitude; and that they intend war to the knife against the South. The only powers in the country which hold the issues of war and peace absolutely in their hands, are the powers at Washington. They can never restore the Union; but they can restore peace without the further effusion of blood. It is plain, however, that they intend to eschew such a policy, for their proceeding at Norfolk utterly negatives every idea of peace.

There is but one possible chance for the early cessation of hostilities; and that chance lies in the blunders of Lincoln. It is impossible but that his incompetency and folly will bring him to a speedy downfall. It is not an unfrequent circumstance that wickedness and sin thus produce their own cure. It is an old adage, that if persons of a certain class are given rope enough they speedily hang themselves. The Administration at Washington have already done much in this direction.--They have produced secession where secession never could have been effected but for them. They have raised up enemies in their path by every measure they have taken to put down enemies already in existence. They are beautifully illustrating the art of sinking the ship of State in attempting to navigate her. Their follies and blunders seem to point to the only exit for the country from the evils which those very follies produce. In two more months the North itself will pray for the downfall of Lincoln. They can afford to tolerate his Administration much less than the South. He is the South's most effective ally; he is the North's evil genius.