The Yankee forces.
The
Romans, when they were gradually pursuing the conquest of the world, increased their troops as the enterprises constantly offering themselves developed themselves before them.
A few legions were sufficient to overruns the neighboring States of
Italy.
Not one hundred thousand men were in the field during the war with
Pyrrhus, or at any time before the great war with
Hannibal.
Julius Cœsar led only six legions to the conquest of
Gaul, and it is not believed that even after the
Empire comprehended 150,000,000 subjects, it ever had more than half a million of men under arms.
The greatest military States of modern times, including the
French Empire under the first
Napoleon, never kept on foot a force exceeding 600,000 men. How, then, are we to account for the army which Yankeedom has sprung upon the world?
It is unlike anything in ancient or modern times.
It does not resemble the hosts of
Xerxes, for that was gathered together by a great
King, holding the absolute power of life or death over all his subjects, and enabled to exact obedience from any of the refractory who should desire to hold back.
It does not resemble the armaments of
Greece or
Rome, at any stage of their grandeur or decay.
It least of all resembles the armaments of modern
Europe, in the details of its organization, and its capacity for efficient service.--It is like nothing, in fact, but the huge hoarders with which the Scythian barbarians, breaking from their haunts in
Central Asia, issued forth periodically during the middle ages to desolate the fairer portion of the old Roman world.
The
Yankees resemble the Nomadic tribes with with which Attics, and Zinghis, and Timour desolated half the world in everything except valor.
They are as unfixed in their habitations — they are as unprincipled in their schemes — they are attracted by a similar spirit of avarice — they are as thoroughly Ishmaelitish in all their propensities — born thieves and predestined disturbers of mankind.
They can no more avoid being what they are than the wild
Arab can avoid the propensity which has been instilled into him by nature to consider every man and everything he meets in the desert as lawful prize.
In their folly the
Yankees believe that because they have a mighty lost, they have therefore a great army.
There never was so palpable a folly.
The body has become unwisely and inefficient from its very ness it is neither the one thing nor the other.
It
is neither an acknowledged mob of irregular useful in their own way, but not supposed to act with all the precision of veterans, nor is it an army of disciplined men. Its character is anomalous, and it is the more useless from its very nondescript appearance.
It has arrived at that point that any addition to its numbers can only have the effect of adding to its size, without in the smallest degree adding to its efficiency.
It is at the very turning out point.
It can neither halt nor go forward.
There never existed but one mind capable of governing so large an army as that calls for in numbers.
The idea of finding a Yankee capable of making it move, is preposterous.
What is it then, what can it be, but an encumbrance to itself, and an ultimate source of annoyance to its enemies?
It carries within itself the seeds of its own dissolution.
It will dissolve upon the first severe rebuff.
We apprehend nothing from these mighty Yankee preparations.
Armies are nothing, without the martial spirit that makes them everything.
Men are nothing, without the instinctive courage that makes them soldiers.
Guns and bayonets are effective only in the hands of those who have the resolution to use them as they should be used.
The very fact that these men are so numerous — that they have boasted so much — and that freedom still remains not only intact, but daringly defiant, is enough to prove to the world outside of
America, the exact relation in which we stand.
