Our arms have been blessed with great and signal success over the organized and disciplined hordes of thieves that were sent here, in the name of Union and liberty, to murder and plunder.
But three weeks since, they were within five miles of the city, breathing vengeance against their ancient masters, whom they have the impudence to call rebels.
They boasted loudly of their invincible army and its invincible commander.
They proclaimed to the world that they had two hundred thousand men, armed equipped and supplied, as no force of the same size, since the days of
Xerxes ever was. They derided our poor equipments and county numbers.
The capture of
Richmond was to be but a holiday affair an achievement which they could effect any morning provided only they rose early enough in the morning.
They had lied until they had fallen into the last stage of moral dissolution.
They began actually to believe their own lies.
Beaten in every skirmish, put to the rout in every picket engagement, unable to stand before our men without the assistance of their gunboats and earth-works, they lied themselves into the belief that they were victorious in all their on counters.
Even when
Lee was carrying all their batteries, and
Jackson had completely turned their right flank and rear, they were writing home that they were conquering in all directions.
But the tables are now turned.
McClellan has effected his ‘"change of position"’ pretty much as
Gates effected his — by the loss of half his Army It is a great pity
Gates had not heard of that synonym for a rout, by the bye, for he was as great a humbug in his day as
McClellan is in this.
Here. after, never let us hear the word defeat, but when we speak of
Waterloo and New Orleans, let us call them ‘"strategic movements,"’ or ‘ "changes of position,"’ on the part of
Napoleon and of
Packenham McClellan has, we say, ‘"changed his position."’ and old-fashioned people call the operation a rout.
He is now thirty miles off, as the crow flies, instead of five, as he was on the 25th of June, and it is precisely at this point that our danger begins We have a painful recollection of
Manassas, of the period of listlessness and inaction which followed that great triumph, and of the almost fatal consequences to which it led.
We cannot believe that our authorities will pursuit a repetition of the torpor which then invaded them, when they reflect upon the disasters of the last winter.
A victory unimproved, is, in almost all cases, equal to a signal defeat.
In some cases it is even worse.
In all it inevitably leads to disaster' by a rule which is always working and never knows rest for a moment.
Let us not, for God's sake and for our own, fall into the error of last year.
Six months afforded the enemy then ample time to recover from the demoralizing effects of
Manassas.
In six months from that battle he had on foot 700,000 men and an innumerable fleet.
In less than that, if he is now suffered to go on recruiting without interruption, he will be more formidable than he ever has been.
Already the same cry begins to be raised that we heard repeated so often last year, We hear continually of intervention as we heard then.
Political arithmeticians are again at work to sum up the indebtedness of the
North and prove the
Yankees utterly bankrupt.
Short sighted mortals persuade themselves now, as they did then, that they can get no more recruits.
All this is fallacious.
If trusted too far, it will become ruinously mischievous.
There is no probability of any intervention, so far as we can see. The Yankee Government will be enabled to exact what sums they want, so long as the war continues to be as popular as it is, for the
Yankee nation knows that separation from the
South is ruin to them.
The 300,000 men asked for by
Lincoln will be raised before our newspapers shall have done discussing the possibility of raising them.
Our hopes lie in the stout hearts and ready hands of our young men. These are the only hopes that have never failed us, and they are the only ones in which we ought ever to confide.
All other are fallacious, and lead only to disaster.
Let at not be thought that we mean to cast any reflection upon our Government, and least of all upon that department of it to which is entrusted the conduct of the war. We well know the energy which has been its characteristic of late.
We see no symptoms of drooping or flagging nor do we suspect for a moment that there are any. But in view of what has happened, a warning voice can never be ill timed.
