From Washington.
[special Correspondence of the Dispatch] Washington, Dec. 31, 1860.
Last day of the year — a year that began so happily.
Who would have thought it could end so sadly!
But this is no time to moralize.
Everybody seems overcome with gloom this morning.
The papers are full of new troubles.
Daily they thicken around us. It seems that Floyd alone his resigned.
Saturday night we were satisfied that Thompson and Thomas had gone out with him. Now the rumor is that Anderson will be ordered back to Fort Moultrie, and Floyd will resume his place in the Cabinet.
This is not likely.
It will ensure the resignation of the four Secretaries from the North.
Members from Georgia were certain, night before last, that Forts Pulaski and Jackson had been seized by the Savannah people.
No such information has been received by the public.
We are beginning to feel here that it is time the Southern people are having an eye to all the fortifications which will come into Lincoln's hands in a few weeks.
Come what may, peace or war, we ought to be prepared.--There should be no delay about getting the several States in the best possible condition for defence.
Ammunition must at once be attend to.
Whether the South Carolinas attack Fort Sumter or not, its occupation by Anderson tends to prevent anything like compromise.--If they do not attack it, the Republicans will call them cowards.
If they do, and are defeated, the Republicans will laugh at them.--If they capture it, of which there is little probability, the Republicans will set up a howl against the rebels.
Even now the States of New Hampshire, Massachusetts, New York and Pennsylvania are organizing large bodies of volunteers to assist the Government in enforcing the laws — in other words, to help it in coercing the South.
Northern papers are jubilant over Anderson's successful trick.
On the other hand, the President's refusal to send Anderson back to Fort Moultrie will be a gross violation of his written pledge to maintain the status quo, and that will inflame the whole South.
Should the Charlestonians commence hostilities, they will be justified on the ground that the Federal Government has perjured itself and assumed a threatening and quasi belligerent attitude.
So it is, the Union appears to be "between the Devil and the deep sea." There is no escape either way — no chance to save it. Every attempt to restore peace has served only to make peace impossible.
Mr. Benjamin speaks this morning.
In a letter just published he touches the core of our grievances.
The passage is so important that I must give it entire.
He declares--
"That the feeling of a very large number (if not a majority) of the people of the North is utterly hostile to our interests; that this feeling has been instilled into the present generation from its infancy; that it is founded on the mistaken belief that the people of the North are responsible for the existence of slavery in the South; that this conviction of a personal responsibility for what they erroneously believe to be a sin, springs chiefly from the consideration that they are with us, members of a common government, and that the Union itself is thus made the principal cause of hostile interference by them with our institutions."
Our only safety therefore, is in a government with which the people of the North shall have nothing on earth to do. While we are under the same roof, there will always be a family quarrel.
Let us have two houses; then each man's house will be his castle, and any interference in our domestic institutions will be as justifiable and as probable as that the Yankees will interfere with the private concerns of Brazil, Spain, or any other foreign nation.
Let us listen, then, to the compromise which shall keep us together, and give the North a pretext (it is all they want) for meddling with our affairs.
Zed. 