The Daily Dispatch: August 1, 1861., [Electronic resource]

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Desperation of the North.
[from the Baltimore Exchange, July 26.]

The tale of death and agony which comes to us from innumerable sources, and depicts with such a horrible but graphic fidelity the condition of the battle-field on the afternoon of Sunday, last, is touching and sorrowful to the last degree. The heaps of ghastly bodies, rent and mutilated, or crushed into shapeless fragments beyond all recognition; the glazed eyes turned upward to the blue sky and the descending sun, the blood-bedabbled fields, and rocks, and high ways; the wounded, crimsoned ever with their own gore, crying piteously for water, yet finding no one to quench their intolerable thirst; imploring help from their comrades, yet seeing them rush past, dear to the faltering accounts that appealed for assistance; the frightful panic and confusion; the roads literally choked up with an interacted mass of vehicles, of every description; the fields swarming with fugitives, and all the region, for miles a round, strewed thick with muskets, knapsack, blankets, coats, shoes, cast recklessly away by the panic stricken multitude during the progress of their flight — these incidents of the battle and of the retreat, all so terribly significant, all so painfully demonstrative of the actual horrors of civil war, and all brought so vividly before us, and so directly home to us, might well admonish the Administration, and its Northern backers to pause now, at the outset, and to profit by the fearful lesson. But if it rest with them to sheath the sword and tender the olive branch, they will not do it. Their resolution is taken to fight the battle to the bitter end. Animated by that base species of pride which goes before destruction, they are bent upon making fresh efforts, to be followed up, as surely as night succeeds day, with new and still more grievous reverses. They entered upon the war for the ostensible purpose of vindicating the Constitution and restoring the Union. The first they have deliberately violated — the second they have broken up past all reparation. By means of the grossest falsehoods, and the most daring usurpations of power, the man who occupies the Presidential chair succeeded in rallying to his support the immense army which, but five days ago, was shattered into fragments, and the stench of whose innumerable dead yet taints the summer air. The sounds of weeping and wailing are heard in many a Northern house-hold; yet, in the midst of the mourning and wretchedness which the prime movers in this crusade against the South have brought upon their own people, the demand has gone forth for fresh victims for the sacrifice. The war is to be prosecuted anew and with a vigor intensified by the mortification of defeat. There will be more talk of the Constitution and the Union; but the subterfuge is fast wearing out. The appeal is not now so much to be made to the patriotism of the Northern people as to their fanaticism — their prejudices and viler passions. The spirit of vindictiveness is to be aroused and brought into play. All the machinery of lies, which has proved so efficient before, is to be brought again into operation. The boldest and most unblushing impositions upon the credulity of the masses are already being made use of to stimulate them to take up arms against the South. Not for the honor and dignity of the Republic; not for the flag; not for the integrity of the Federal compact; nor for the Union in whose name so many evil deeds have already been committed — not for any of these things are they now to be summoned to the war, but in a spirit of pure revenge. The Northern journals are, even now, at work to stimulate them to the highest pitch of ferocity. With mendacity rarely equalled, and certainly never surpassed, they are recounting stories of Southern barbarities reported to have been perpetrated upon the wounded after the late battle. Wounded Fire Zouaves are said to have been cut into quarters; others, whilst lying upon the ground to have had their throats cut; men of other regiments are reported to have been pierced in a dozen places with bowie-knives, or placed against the trees and fired at for targets; whilst the heads of some of the dead or wounded are said to have been cut off and kicked about for foot balls. Even the ambulances, it is charged, were attacked, and shells thrown into the hospital at Centreville. Every imaginable species of atrocity is imputed to the victors, and the malignant falsehoods are caught up with avidity, and disseminated with eagerness, for the express purpose of rousing, among the populace at the North, a storm of passion, and of provoking them to engage in a war of extermination. These are the tales which are told by men, who left the field so early, or so hastily, that it is impossible they could have known what took place after the Confederate troops came upon the ground. In the name of justice and of right, of civilization and of humanity, we solemnly protest against the circulation of these atrocious lies. Of all the wars that carry desolation in its train, civil war, even in its mildest aspect, is the most baneful; but when antagonism between men of the same race and lineage degenerates into the perpetration of barbarities that bring disgrace and humiliation upon the Christian name and upon a civilized people, the horrors of such a war are exasperated to their utmost pitch. Yet it is with such savage feelings that the New York. Tribune and other Republican journals are striving to imbue the Northern masses. They can have no other effect than to strengthen the bitterness which already exists between the two sections. It is playing with edged tools to tamper with the worst passions of the multitude, and to convert this war into a contest such as humanity shudders to contemplate.--Let them beware in time, lest the diabolical spirit which, by the most infamous means, they are now striving to evoke, should turn, after a little while, and rend the men that raised it.