The Chief Body Of
The Confederate Army In The West Had Abandoned The Fortified
Position Which They Had Long Held At Bowling Green, In The
Southwestern District Of Kentucky.
Roanoke Island, on the coast of
North Carolina, had been taken by General Burnside's expedition, and
a belief had begun to manifest itself in Washington that the army of
the Potomac was really about to advance.
It is impossible to
explain in what way the renewed confidence of the Northern party
showed itself, or how one learned that the hopes of the
secessionists were waxing dim; but it was so; and even a stranger
became aware of the general feeling as clearly as though it were a
defined and established fact. In the early part of the winter, when
I reached Washington, the feeling ran all the other way. Northern
men did not say that they were despondent; they did not with spoken
words express diffidence as to their success; but their looks
betrayed diffidence, and the moderation of their self-assurance
almost amounted to despondency. In the capital the parties were
very much divided. The old inhabitants were either secessionists or
influenced by "secession proclivities," as the word went; but the
men of the government and of the two Houses of Congress were, with a
few exceptions, of course Northern. It should be understood that
these parties were at variance with each other on almost every point
as to which men can disagree. In our civil war it may be presumed
that all Englishmen were at any rate anxious for England. They
desired and fought for different modes of government; but each party
was equally English in its ambition. In the States there is the
hatred of a different nationality added to the rancor of different
politics. The Southerners desire to be a people of themselves - to
divide themselves by every possible mark of division from New
England; to be as little akin to New York as they are to London, or,
if possible, less so. Their habits, they say, are different; their
education, their beliefs, their propensities, their very virtues and
vices are not the education, or the beliefs, or the propensities, or
the virtues and vices of the North. The bond that ties them to the
North is to them a Mezentian marriage, and they hate their Northern
spouses with a Mezentian hatred. They would be anything sooner than
citizens of the United States. They see to what Mexico has come,
and the republics of Central America; but the prospect of even that
degradation is less bitter to them than a share in the glory of the
stars and stripes. Better, with them, to reign in hell than serve
in heaven! It is not only in politics that they will be beaten, if
they be beaten, as one party with us may be beaten by another; but
they will be beaten as we should be beaten if France annexed us, and
directed that we should live under French rule.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 141 of 275
Words from 72480 to 72980
of 142339
