The Daily Dispatch: December 10, 1864., [Electronic resource]

Among the examples which history affords of a long and desperate struggle between power on the one hand and resolution on the other, the Isthmus of the Caucasus presents a striking illustration.

Let us look, for our instruction and encouragement, in the present contest, to the respective strength and condition of Russia and the inhabitants of the Caucasian isthmus at the beginning of their protracted struggle. From the time of Peter the Great, the acquisition of that region and the subjugation of its inhabitants never ceased to enlist the profound attention of the Russian Government. The only pretext of Russia for the war upon Circassia was that, by virtue of the treaty of Adrianople, Turkey had placed Circassia under the dominion of Russia, whereas Turkey herself never had, nor claimed to have, rights over the Circassians or their country. We are not discussing the question of right, however. It is might which too often makes right in this world. It was a stern political necessity for Russia to obtain Circassia, as the key to all her projected military enterprises in the East. Any pretext would be sufficient for a war having that object. Her strength was such as the most powerful nation might be reluctant to encounter. Alone, of all other States, she, from the time of Peter, had encountered no reverses. She had successively swallowed up empire after empire. Enormous hordes of men furnished recruits to the Muscovite standards; and it is a race which doubles in every half- century. On the other side were the tribes of the Caucasus, numbering a population of only three millions. The world looked upon these mountaineers as simply barbarians. What, then, is the history of a war waged on one side by the most colossal of modern empires, and conducted by her best generals, and on the other by a mere handful of rude mountaineers, destitute of all means of resistance save those supplied by their own courage and ingenuity? That war has lasted nearly seventy years, and the sturdy spirit of Circassia is still unsubdued. Admitting that seven millions of civilized and heroic Anglo-Saxons, abundantly supplied with weapons of war, and possessing within themselves resources of inventive skill and agricultural and mineral resources unknown to the Caucasus, cannot do better than the rude and imperfectly armed three millions of Circassians, the North may look forward to seventy years of bloody war before it can approach the subjugation of this country, instead of the sixty days which Mr. Seward promised them four years ago.

Nor was this ill success of Russia occasioned by any undue economy of her military resources. She has never been frugal of human life nor of the material of war. Her annual loss in this invasion has been estimated at 15,000 out of 80,000 men.--The Army of the Caucasus required to be renewed once in every four or five years. In forty years she lost six hundred thousand men and officers, which is nothing to the Northern loss in four years, taking Northern accounts as our basis. Grant's loss in a single battle is often as great as that of the Russian Army of the Caucasus in a whole year. If the North does not feel the drain of her population, still less did Russia. The men sent to her army were, for the most part, men who had already been doomed to destruction; the insubordinate, the suspected, and the poor Poles. The army was, moreover, mostly supported by the Southern provinces in a manner not felt by the empire. The North, which is not Russia in anything but barbarism, already is losing her supply of foreign soldiers, and is also compelled to support from her own treasury the enormous expense of the war.

Nor did Russia lack the ferocity to carry on such a war to a successful consummation. It is true that, not till after forty years of battle, of murder and desolation, a project of exterminating the Circassians was seriously proposed in Russia. That project has been seriously proposed in the North before four years of our war have expired. But the Russians, after all, are men, not demons, and, compared with the rest of mankind, (among whom it is impossible to class Yankee exterminators,) her conduct in attempting to exterminate a whole race was as atrocious as it proved impracticable. It deserves to be remarked, as exhibiting a parallel in one respect to what we have seen in the North, that two plans were proposed to the Emperor of Russia by two opposite parties; one of a mild, the other of a very opposite character. "The former party," says a narrator of these events, "lamenting the enormous waste of blood and treasure to the empire, and referring to long experience in support of their opinion that conquest by force was hopeless, counselled measures of conciliation, and a renewal of former (though at those times ineffectual) attempts at establishing commercial relations with the country, in order to humanize the Circassians. They admitted the necessity of a blockade and the exclusion of foreign interference; for their object, like that of the other parties, was not the happiness of the Circassians so much as their subjugation and the aggrandizement of Russia. They therefore proposed the maintenance of some forts on the coast, but in other respects suggested mild measures, a free bestowal of favors and benefits, with the further temptation of honors and personal advantages to individuals; all of which, they conceived, might in time reconcile these mountaineers to regard Russia as their sovereign and superior. The proposals of the other party, on the contrary, were conceived in the spirit of the most uncompromising severity, and breathed nothing but fire and sword." The latter project was adopted; and General Williameenoff, who proposed it, was entrusted with its execution, pledging himself to reduce Circassia by his plan within seven years. This was thirty years ago. The only effect was the exasperation of the Circassians to the most intense hatred, strengthened by desperation. Hitherto the defensive of the Caucasus had been weakened by fends, family quarrels, claims of individual and personal interest, and the separate action of disunited tribes. Now they resolved to bury forever all private passions and interests, and a convocation of princes and chiefs of clans was summoned, who formed a confederation, every member of which bound himself, by the most sacred oaths, to maintain the liberty of his country against Russian aggression with his best blood. A solemn interdict was placed on all intercourse with the enemy, even for salt and other necessaries, under pain of the most signal punishment. Even families which had received benefits from their foes were forced to join the league; and, as a proof of their determination, the whole property of an invalid, who had gone for medical assistance, was committed to the flames.--Such is the only spirit which threats of extermination arouse in the breasts of a free people. In the two campaigns that followed, Williameenoff, the Exterminator, was himself very nearly exterminated without having gained one important point. The world soon became convinced that the idea of subduing a free people, by means so revolting, was as absurd as it was inhuman.

Like ourselves, the Circassians were environed by a blockade, which not only rendered it difficult to obtain arms, but even salt, which they could not produce; and, like us, they had no friends. Turkey, bound to them by so many ties of blood, turned a deaf ear to their invocations for assistance, and England, whose vital interest it was to thwart the designs of Russia upon the East rigidly maintained her stupid and cold-blooded non-intervention. Yet, in spite of all these discouragements, Circassia has successfully resisted the enormous odds of Russia for nearly seventy years, and the spirit of her people is still unbroken.

Can we not do as well? If we can do no better, if after seventy years we must fail, what will the North gain to remunerate its blood and treasure?--In the choice vernacular of that people, we ask emphatically, "will it pay?" What will be the prospects of cotton and tobacco after seventy years of war? Russia, when she gains the Caucasus, has her reward in the East. The North, when it gains the South, has her reward in a desert. Even vengeance will be disappointed, for its original objects will long ere then have passed away. And with them — rejoice, oh delivered humanity — Seward, Lincoln & Co. will have gone to their final account. They will never live to glut their eyes with the triumph of their wickedness; and men like them are too intensely. selfish in its consoled amid the horrors which surround the death bed of criminals against humanity by the prospect of the ultimate success of that iniquity in this world which can only receive its due retribution hereafter.