The Daily Dispatch: September 5, 1861., [Electronic resource]

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Another English opinion
[from the London ‘"John Bull."’]

The great battle at Manassas Junction is likely to be a memorable event in Transatlantic chronicles, although it rather belongs to the comic than to the tragic side of history. While, however, it is difficult to restrain one's appreciation of the ridiculous at reading the account of the panic-stricken and screaming mob which Mr. Russell encountered in the pell-mell fight for Washington, we are bound to remark that this was an army of civilians. As to the results of the battle, we can only rejoice that the Northerners, engaged as they seem to us to be, in a war of aggressive conquest, have so signally miscarried at the very outset of their invasion. --It was incumbent on them, before they drew the sword against men of their own race and speaking their own language, (such as it is,) to show distinctly that those men were not entitled by the terms of the Constitution to do as they had done. So far are they from being able to do this, that wherever the documents of the Constitution have spoken at all, they tend to show that such State is still a sovereign State, and as such entitled to withdraw from the Federation whenever it shall think that the understanding on which that Federation was founded has not been duly kept in view. But even had the Constitution been explicitly in favor of the States which claim to coerce the others so fratricidal a war would still not have been justifiable unless the Northern States were prepared to show that they possess the means of retaining their conquest when effected. But they can only hold the South by the creation of a great military caste which, if it were called into existence, would soon hold the North, too, after fashion quite inconsistent with their present institutions. The North, however, have little chance of endangering their freedom and easiness by the creation of such a military caste. Certainly they have not as yet gone the right way to do it. It is plain that the tailors and drapers of New York and Boston are no match for the Texan rangers, and the ‘"brown foresters from the banks of the Mississippi,"’ such as Mr. Dickens encountered on board a steamboat, and whom he remarked to be an object of deference even in those days. Finding matters to stand thus, let us hope that President Lincoln and his advisers will make a virtue of necessity; that the belligerents will sheath their a words and set their newspapers to abuse each other. We know what American journals can do in that field.