Lo, dim in the starlight their white tents appear!
Ride softly! ride slowly! the onset is near!
More slowly! more softly! the sentry may hear!
Now fall on the Rebel—a tempest of flame!
Strike down the false banner whose triumph were shame!
Strike, strike for the true flag, for freedom and fame!
Hurrah! sheathe your swords! the carnage is done.
All red with our valor, we welcome the sun.
Up, up with the stars! we have won! we have won!
NO FAILURE FOR THE NORTH.
We have reached a point in the history of our national troubles where it seems desirable to examine our present position, and to consider whether we ought to surrender ourselves to despair, or congratulate ourselves on decided success,—whether we should abandon all attempts to restore the Union, assert the dignity of the Constitution, and punish treason, or nerve ourselves to new effort, and determine to persevere in a righteous cause so long as a single able-bodied man remains or a dollar of available property is unexpended.
It may be, it must be, conceded that we commenced the contest with very crude and inadequate notions of what war really is. We proposed to decide the issue by appealing to the census and the tax-list,—tribunals naturally enough occurring to a mercantile and manufacturing community,—but how if the enemy prefer cannon and cold steel? Our first campaign was in the field of statistics, and we found the results highly satisfactory. Our great numerical superiority, aided by our immense material resources, gave us an early and an easy victory. We outnumbered the enemy everywhere, defeated them in every pitched battle, starved them by a vigilant blockade, secured meanwhile the sympathy and support of the whole civilized world by the holiness of our cause, and commanded its respect by the display of our material power and our military capacity,—and in a few short months crushed the Rebellion, restored the Union, vindicated the Constitution, hung the arch-traitors, and saw peace in all our borders. This was our campaign—on paper. But war is something more than a sum in arithmetic. A campaign cannot be decided by the rule of three. No finite power can control every contingency, and have all the chances in its favor.
A Moorish legend, given to us in the graceful narrative of Washington Irving, relates, that an Arabian astrologer constructed for the pacific Aben Hafuz, King of Granada, a magical mode of repulsing all invaders without risking the lives of his subjects or diminishing the contents of the royal treasury. He caused a tower to be built, in the upper part of which was a circular hall with windows looking towards every point of the compass, and before each window a table supporting a mimic army of horse and foot. On the top of the tower was a bronze figure of a Moorish horseman, fixed on a pivot, with elevated lance. Whenever a foe was at hand, the figure would turn in that direction, and level his lance as if for action. No sooner was it reported to the vigilant monarch that the magic horseman indicated the approach of an enemy, than His Majesty hastened to the circular hall, selected the table at the point of the compass indicated by the horseman's spear, touched with the point of a magic lance some of the pigmy effigies before him, and belabored others with the butt-end. A scene of confusion at once ensued in the mimic army. Part fell dead, and the rest, turning their weapons upon each other, fought with the utmost fury. The same scene was repeated in the ranks of the advancing enemy. Each renewed attempt at invasion was foiled by this easy and economical expedient, until the King enjoyed rest even from rumors of wars.
Now this is a pleasing fiction, and highly creditable to the light and airy fancy of the Moors. It almost makes one sigh that an astrologer so fertile in resources is not still extant. It is difficult to conceive, indeed, of a more felicitous arrangement for a monarch devoted to his ease, and proof against all temptations to military glory, or for a people wedded to peaceful pursuits, and ambitious only of material prosperity. But no such fascinating substitute for fields of carnage is available in our degenerate days,—"C'est charmant, mais ce n'est pas la guerre."
Nor yet is any useful example furnished by the warlike qualities of the army raised by Peter Stuyvesant for the reduction of Fort Casimir: not even when we remember that it included "the Van Higginbottoms, a race of schoolmasters, armed with ferules and birchen rods,—the Van Bummels, renowned for feats of the trenches,—the Van Bunschotens, who were the first that did kick with the left foot,"—with many other warriors equally fierce and formidable. We must, however reluctantly, leave such romantic legends and facetious chronicles, and learn more practical lessons from the sober and instructive page of history. We shall there find that war means alternate success and defeat, alternate hope and disappointment, great suffering in the field, many vacant chairs at many firesides, immense expenditures with little apparent result, "the best-laid schemes" foiled by a thousand unexpected contingencies, lamentable indecision in the cabinet, glaring blunders in the field, stagnation of industry, and heavy taxation.
"War is a game, which, were the nations wise,
Kings would not play at."