The Daily Dispatch: September 13, 1862., [Electronic resource]

---

---

From the North

From late Northern papers we make up the following additional news:

---

The North to be conquered.

The Yankees are taking a new view of the war Harper a Weekly is shaking about the invasion, and says that the South promised long ago to conquer the North. It concludes an article on the subject as follows

Well fellow Northerners, they will make their words good unless we believe in ourselves as heartily as they in themselves. They have ranged their class and their civilization against ours. It is useless to disguise the scope of the contest. Their system must be annihilated or ours must. We must conquer and subdue them utterly or they will absolutely overcome us. After sixteen months of war they are flushed with hope and confidence; but their purpose is no stronger now than ever. They have always meant conquest of the North. They hoped it would come by peaceable secession, and then a peaceable surrender of the North under the name of reconstruction. But they believe now that the same practical result can be achieved without separation.

---

Affairs at New Orleans — the town Becoming
Too Hot for Picayune.

The last advices from New Orleans say an attack on Carrolton, five miles from that city, was daily expected. The old Confederate defensive works were being strengthened by the Federals to resist an attack. The guerrillas come daily to Algiers across the river from New Orleans. A Northern paper, of the 6th, says:

‘ Three days before the steamer left Gen. Butler dispatched a company of soldiers to make a reconnaissance beyond Algiers. The troops left early in the morning in the train, and after proceeding a short distance rebel pickets were seen advancing — The train was stopped and the troops alighted and an advance was ordered to feel their way. While engaged in this work a large force of guerrillas rushed from the woods, where they were previously imperceptible, and fired, killing and wounding our pickets before they had time to exchange bullets — Then another volley came, and subsequently a deadly engagement, in which the greater part of our troops were wounded, including the officers.

’ One of the rebels having spied the fireman on the train, instantly discharged his piece and killed him in the hope of capturing the party. In this effort, Lowever he was happily foiled. The rebels, it is said, soon afterwards retired to the woods apparently under the impression that the company were only the advance guard of a regiment approaching, leaving the troops to return to New Orleans with the report of the reconnaissance.

Baton Rouge, although evacuated by the main body of soldiers, is still in possession of a company of marines, under the protection of two gunboats which are to be changed every seven days. The city has not been destroyed. Only a few houses about twenty in number which intercepted the range of our fortifications on the interior, have been destroyed.

Many of the points on the shore of the river towards Baton Rouge are occasionally lined with rebels, who fire on our transports whenever they are not in reach of our gunboats. The rebels have become bolder and more insolent since the departure of our army from Baton Rouge.

---

Position of the Union cause — Plain talk for
a Northern Latitude.

The New York Times of Friday, has a melancholy but very truthful editorial on the present aspect of Yankee affairs. We bespeak for it as attentive perusal

The summer campaign which was to have given us the rebel capital, has come to a disastrous end Richmond is relieved, and Washington is besieged. That magnificent army, organized and drilled with so much care by McClellan a year ago, repulsed first on the Peninsula, has been again repulsed in its advance upon Richmond from the North, and now seeks safety for itself behind the forts which line the Potomac Disguise it as we may, the Union arms have been repeatedly, disgracefully, and decisively beaten. The whole campaign against Richmond has proved a failure. The rebels have resumed the offensive, and have driven our troops back to the precise position they held after the battle of Bull Run more than one year ago. Our Generals do not seem to be aware whether they intend to attack us there, or push forward on some other time of operations. One thing may be deemed certain — they will not sit down in front of Washington and attempt to reduce it by siege.--They will either attempt a flank movement upon it, or what seems to us still more likely, they will push a powerful column directly into Pennsylvania and strike a blow at the Union cause on loyal soil.

There is a class of public men who think it highly unwise to admit that we have suffered any serious reverses. They have copious explanations of the apparent checks our forces have sustained, and abundant assurances that they are all to be redeemed in the immediate future. We regret that we cannot share their credulous confidence. All their explanations cannot change this fact, that wherever we have met the rebels — whether behind an earthwork, as in front of Richmond, or in the open field, as in front of Washington — they have beaten us. Sometimes they have outflanked us; sometimes they have got completely in the rear of our forces; sometimes they have thrown their whole force upon a single weak point of our line and so overborne us by numbers; sometimes they have drawn us into an ambuscade; but it matters not how — the fact remains that they have beaten us. And all that these various explanations amount to is that their Generals are bolder and more skillful and their armies more effective than ours.--This is all that anybody can ask in war. And it is worse than idle — it is childish and idiotic to attempt to shut our eyes to the glaring and repulsive fact that thus far in the war the rebels have the best of the fighting. The sooner we realize our actual condition, the sooner shall we find a remedy for it.

What is the cause of these awful disasters?--Not in any lack of men, for our armies outnumber the rebels two to one. Not in lack of arms, of munitions of supplies — of all the means and appliances of successful war — for no army on the face of the earth has ever been so lavishly supplied with all these as ours. Not in the goodness of the cause — nor in the spirit of the people — nor in the valor and patience of our soldiers, for in all these respects we may challenge the world to surpass us. We are driven to the conclusion that the rebel Generals have been superior to ours; that the rebel Government has been better able to wield skillfully and successfully the weapons placed in its hands. Results afford the only test of military capacity. The army that conquers is always the best. Large or small, ragged or well clad, hungry or full, armed or unarmed, the army that drives its enemy off the field is always the better of the two. Our forces have been splendidly drilled, admirably clothed and armed, and always supplied with abundant food; but they have been defeated, and that fact overrides all others, and brands them as inferior.

We all hope that all this is to be changed; but so we have been hoping for the whole year past. The very next step was always to turn the tide. We were to have ‘"no more Bull Runs, "’ when McClellan took command. The enemy was to be ‘"driven to the wall" ’ after he had evacuated Yorktown.--The army of the Potomac, it was declared, shall enter Richmond, after it had suffered defeat behind its own fortifications. And there were to be no more retreats on our side, after Pope took the lead toward the rebel capital. Yet, in spite of all these assurances, made with confidence, and eagerly welcomed by the credulous country, our armies are besieged, but all ‘"safe"’ in the Potomac forts. Who can say that the tide of disaster has yet been stayed! What is there to turn it? We have fresh men in the field — but so we had before. Possibly the enemy cannot take the forts — and, possibly knowing that fact, they will not try. But if we can judge the future from the past, they will be very likely to attempt something which they can accomplish, and the first we shall know of it will be that it has been done.

We see no ground for predicting better results so long as we employ the same means. We have the same Generals, the same policy, the same Government, the same President, and the same Cabinet as we have had hitherto. We enter upon the future under the same auspices precisely which have presided over our past disasters. What possible reason, then, have we to expect a change? The entire responsibility for all these calamities rests upon the Government — simply because all the power is in its hands. Grant that many of our commanding Generals are incompetent — that they waste in personal wrangling energy that should be given to the cause — that they are weak, irresolute, incapable, and therefore unsuccessful — the Government is responsible for their failures, because it has the power to displace them. A General may fail once through his own fault; if he fails a second time the fault rests with those who kept him there. War is no time for elaborate experiments, or for patching up shattered reputations.

The President needs to reinforce his Cabinet with new vigor and new ability. Without any impeachment of his own capacity, the President must have a strong Cabinet or he will have a weak Government. The ablest of our Presidents have been the ones who have surrounded themselves with the ablest men. The theory that Cabinet officers are more secretaries, and therefore not responsible, does not avail; each Secretary carries not only into his own department, but into the whole policy of the Administration, the spirit, the vigor, the energy of his own nature; and if the Cabinet is made up of weak men, they will inevitably give the country a weak Government. We need now the strongest Government the country has ever seen. And it needs no prophet to predict that, without more strength, more vigorous power, a larger grasp, and more energetic mastery of the resources which the country is pouring into the hands of the Administration than we have had hitherto, the Union cause is doomed to a speedy and disastrous overthrow.