The Daily Dispatch: January 9, 1862., [Electronic resource]

Among other Qualities which distinguish man from the brute creation is the faculty of reason. Upon this he especially prides himself, and the Yankee man in partitioning has always exulted in being not only the superior of the beasts, but of all other men as a rational being. Upon the article of soul, and upon the moral attributes, and the domestic and social affections, the genuine Jouathan was never very exclusive. Butpure reason was the god of his idolatry, and the capacity to calculate consequences, discerning his interests, and holding on to them at all hazards and to the last extremity, were the chief glory of the sons of the Pilgrima. The head and not the heart was their seat of greatness, and looking out for Number One, the great end of humanity.

Estinated then by the standard which the Yankees have themselves adopted, what are we to think of Yankeedom as illustrated by the present war? What has become of that super-eminent reason by which they claimed so be exalted above all other men? What of their intelligent self-interest? What of their capacity for calculating consequences and taking care of Number One? There is no explanation of their course except on the theory of national insanity, of a moral epidemic which has seized upon their whole race, and prostrated their Goddess of Reason in the dust. That all their interests were involved in the precervation of the late Union, they now admit, and that of all the ways of reaching it, war is the last, every one under heaven sees but themselves. Yet they persist, at an enormous expense, in carrying on a gigantic scheme of invasion, which now, after a year's trial, has proved a fearful abortion, and which, every hour that it continues, increases the hazard of adding a crushing war to their American embroilments.

After the crowning madnees of electing a President by the North to rule over the South, and after the secession of the Gulf States, there was still a course by which they migh have averted the heavy judgment that their folly had provoked, and have even held out a chance of a reconstruction of the old Union. They might have withdrawn from the forts of Charleston the few hundred soldiers who were not strong enough to protect the property of the United States, and whose presence only tended to irritale the South and provoke collision and bloodshed. They might have nought to conciliate the border States, which were eager to meet them more than half way, and when would have clung to the Union forever if they had been permitted to do so without dishonor. But in vain these States, led on by Virginia, the grand, historic old Commonwealth of the Revolution, begged and implored for compromise and justice. A jadicial blindness seemed to have seized upon the whole Yankee nation. Lincoln, their chosen President, hardened his heart like Pharoah, and would not let the people go. Instead of yielding to the suggestions of prudence and moderation, he adopted measures of savage violence, which absolutely drove Virginia and every other Southern State out of the old Confederacy, and forced them to take up arms in defence of their rights and liberties. Instead of being warned by the solemn attitude of the border States, the whole Yankee population was excited to such a pitch of frenzy as had never before been board of outside a lunatic asylum. We believe that the day will come when the Yankees will read the accounts of their horrible menaces against the purity of Southern households and the lives and honor of Southern men at the beginning of this war, and confess that they were stark, staring mad, raving Bedlamites, and fit only for straight jackets and a mad house. Yet this is the people who have always held themselves up as the incarnation of pure reason, and have affected to look down from their iceberg elevation upon the sunny South as a race of impulsive, passionate beings, who were mere children in comparison with the wise, rational, self-possessed, and self-restraining philosophers of New England.

It is to be hoped that the present contest will beach the Yankees true wisdom, which consists in knowing one's self, and in knowing other people, in both which branches of knowledge they have shown themselves lamentably deficient, and which also includes the cultivation of the moral as well as the intellectual faculties. They are engaged at present in the most Quixotic project ever undertaken by any people since the foundation of the world. If they could subjugate the South, it would only be by the extermination of its inhabitants and the desolation of its whole territory, a consummation which would involve their own manufacturing and commercial destruction as well as that of the Southern people. But they cannot succeed. They are piling up mountains of debt only to ensure disaster, disgrace, and everlasting bankruptey. The South will dispute every inch of ground with them, from Texas to the Rio Grande. It will make every hill top an Alleghany fight, and every plain a Manassas. It will demonstrate its independence to the satisfaction of all maukind; and when it has done so, the powerful nations of Europe, always willing to help those who are able to help themselves, will array themselves against the U. S., and put the crazy North in the straight-jacket of compulsory peace. They will be turned out to graze — like Nebuchadnessac — with the oxon, and become in the end a sadder, but a wisernation. Alas! for the knowing, smart, rational Yankee race! To what a state of hopeless idiocy and imbecility have they fallen!