The Daily Dispatch: March 15, 1862., [Electronic resource]

---

---

Stump orators.
[for a forthcoming number of De Bose's Revices
by George Fitzhugh.

Along peace is sure to demoralize a nation; and a demoralized people always select as their representatives, judges and magistrates those least fitted to govern — those who will govern least — the lax, the indulgent, the effemirate, and the corrupt. Soldiers accustomed to rule, and who know best how to rule, are cast aside, and stump orators and demagogues, who flatter the mob and give license to their baseat passions, are elevated to all high places. ‘"The canker of a bad war and a ling peace"’ is in such times exhibited more glaringly among the rulers of a people than anong the masses themselves, because the rules are selected as the fittest exponents, representatives and impersonations of the prevalent debanshery, effeminacy and corruption of the day. In peace, long continued, the voice of the people is the voice of a Belial-life demon; in time of difficulty, adversity, and invasion, ‘"the voice of the people is the voice of God."’ Then they select their best, nost honest, and most rigid men, and cast aside corrupt, silly, indulgent demagogues and sump orators.

These stump orators held all the high and honorable positions under the late Federal Government, and have been bequeathed as a legacy, or falen as a blight, upon our Confederate Government. They interrupt and impede the administration of affairs, State and Federal, by speeches to Buncombe, and by prying into executive matters, about which they understand nothing, or if they did, are too numerous, too tattling, and too corrupt to be trusted with executive secrets — for divided responsibility makes all legislative bodies more or less careless and corrupt. Besides, executive business can only be surely or safely conducted by a single sovereign head. In times of difficulty some found two Consuls--one too much — and always called in a dictator. England does the same thing, and virtually clothes her Premier with sovereign power during the pelding of serious hostilities. We must follow their examples.--We must find in each State a governor, or soldier, or somebody else, no matter whether it be a Premier or a President, a priest, a ennuch, or a woman whose will, for the time, shall be law, whose behests the Legislature shall obey, passing the laws which he proposes, and granting the supplies which he asks for. Sitting all the while with closed doors, excluding reporters and none speaking more than 15 minutes it a time.

Congress must, also, in the same manner, be guided, directed, and controlled by the President and his Cabinet; to promptly and cheerfully what they are required to do, and ask no impartinent questions; for so numerous a body should never be trusted with State secrets.

War naturally suspends law and liberty, and if we are not willing to submit to the temporary sacrifice, we shall be conquered by the North, and be without law or liberty forever.

Having thus gagged the stump orators in Congress and in our State Legisatures, we must next turn our attention to our armies, where they are unfortunately almost as numerous as in our deliberative bodies. Improvised Generals! In all the tide of time, except as a miraculous interposition Providence, such a phenomenon was never witnessed before. It is true, there was little David, and Joan of Arc, and Minerth, who were brave warriors, and needed no taching or training; but they were quite out of the ordinary course of things, and wholly like a Confederate stump orator.

We shall certainly be subject to frequent reverses, surprises, and defeats, until we get rid of this pestilent material in our armes. No trained and intelligent soldier ever was, or ever will be, willing to fight under the d of a mere stump orator. Of all arts, the t of war is the most difficult to learn; and none learn it well but men of genius, who apply themselves to it in youth, and practice for many years. Old men, and most especially old stump orators, can learn nothing new. Far better make a boy of eighteen a General, for he is impressionable, and learns new things readily, than attempt to make an officer of a man over forty-five, who has had no military training.

The incubus of demagogism, in the shape of stump orators, descended to us from the late Union, fetters our limbs, paralyzes us, and will soon ruin us, if not speedily shaken off.

On this subject we will again quote Mr. Carlyle:

‘ "So that the sad conclusion, which all experience, wherever it has been tried, has fatally made good, appears to be, that Parliaments, admirable as advisory bodies, and likely to be in future universally useful in that capacity, are, as rulling or sovereign bodies, not useful, but useless or worse. That a sovereign, with nine hundred or six hundred and fifty-eight heads, all set to talk against each other, in the presence of thirty-four or twenty-seven, or eighteen millions, cannot do the work of sovereignty at all, but is smitten with eternal incompetence for that function by the law of nature itselt. Such, alast is the sad conclusion; and in England, and wherever else it is tried, a sad experience will rapidly make it good.

Only perhaps in the United States, which alone of all countries, can do without governing, every man being at least able to live and move off into the wilderness--1st Congress Jargon as it will — can such a form of so called ‘"government"’ continue for any length of time to torment men with the semblance, when the indispensable substance is gone. For America, as the citizens well know, is ‘"an unparalled country,"’ with mud soil enough, and fierce sun enough, in the Mississippi Valley alone, to grow indian corn for the extant posterity of Adam at this time. What other country ever stood in such a case? ‘"Speechas to Bunkum,"’ and a constitutional battle of the Kilkenny cats, which in other

countries are becoming tregical and unendurable, may there still fall under the comical category. If, indeed, America should ever experience a higher call, as is likely, and begin to feel diviner wants than that of Indian corn with abundant bacon and molasses, and unlimited scope for all citizens to hunt dollars,--America, too, will find that caucuses, division liste, stump oratory, and speeches to Bunkum, will not carry men to the immortal gods; that the Washington Congress, and constitutional battle of Kilkenny cats, is, there as here, naught for such objects; quite incompetent for such, and, in fine, that said sublime constitutional arrangement will require to be (with terrible throes and travall, such as few expect yet,) remodeled, abridged, extended, suppressed; torn asunder, put together a gain; not without heroic labor, and efforts quite other than that of the stump orator and the revival preacher of our day.

’