When an evil attains this extent, he is a poor citizen, a poor cowardly dallier with opinions, whatever his fighting mark may be, who can make up his mind to calmly acquiesce in establishing its permanence, or to stiffly oppose every movement and every suggestion tending in the least towards its abrogation.
In the present number of the CONTINENTAL will be found an article on General LYON, in which reference is made to the generally credited assertion, that the deceased hero was not reinforced as he desired during the campaign in Missouri. This is one of the questions which time alone will properly answer. In accordance with the principles involved in audi alteram partem, we give on this subject the following abridgment of a portion of General FREMONT'S defense, published in the New York Tribune of March 6:—
Lyon's and Prentiss's troops were nearly all three months men, whose term of enlistment was about expiring. Arms and money were wanted, but men offered in abundance. The three months men had not been paid. The Home Guards were willing to remain in the service, but their families were destitute. Gen. Fremont wrote to the President, stating his difficulties, and informing him that he should peremptorily order the United States Treasurer there to pay over to his paymaster-general the money in his possession, sending a force at the same time to take the money. He received no reply, and assumed that his purpose was approved.
Five days after he arrived at St. Louis he went to Cairo, taking three thousand eight hundred men for its reinforcement. He says that Springfield was a week's march, and before he could have reached it, Cairo would have been taken by the rebels, and perhaps St. Louis. He returned to St. Louis on the 4th of August, having in the meantime ordered two regiments to the relief of Gen. Lyon, and set himself to work at St. Louis to provide further reinforcements for him; but he claims that Lyon's defeat can not be charged to his administration, and quotes from a letter from General Lyon, dated on the 9th of August, expressing the belief that he would be compelled to retire; also, from a letter written by Lyon's adjutant general, in which he says 'General Fremont was not inattentive to the situation of General Lyon's column.'
A daily cotemporary, in an onslaught on Emancipation, contains the following:—
Delaware has recently had a proposition before the legislature to abolish the scarcely more than nominal slavery still existing in it; but the legislature adjourned without even listening to it, though it contemplated full pecuniary compensation.
Yes; and the legislature of Delaware, a few years ago, legalized lotteries,—one of the greatest social curses of the country,—and made itself a hissing and a by-word to all decent men by sanctioning the most widely-destructive method of gambling known. The Delaware legislature indeed!
We are indebted to a friend for the following paragraph:—
It is deeply significant that since the late Federal victories, the Southern press, even in Richmond itself, speaks nervously and angrily of the Union men among them, and of their increasing boldness in openly manifesting their sentiments. A few months since, this belief in Union men in the South was abundantly ridiculed by those who believed that all the slave-holding States were unanimous in rebellion, and that therefore it would be preposterous to hope to reconcile them to emancipation. Now that the Union strength in that region is beginning to manifest itself, we are informed that we shall lose it if we do aught contrary to Southern rights. And this too, although the Southern Union men have never been spoken of by their rebel neighbors as aught save 'the abolitionists in our midst!'
The following communication from a well-known financier and writer on currency can not fail to be read with interest by all:—