Has not this accusation been abundantly proved? Does not the whole country know that traitors, 'democratic' traitors, have acted so successfully as spies that nothing has been kept secret from the enemy?
'Men were selected in the States and sent hundreds of miles to Washington, with strong influences to back them for this purpose. Better to carry out their project, they adroitly raised the 'No Party' cry, and by professing the most exalted and devoted loyalty, claimed the best places in which to betray the Union cause.' 'They claim a large number of the officers of companies, regiments, brigades, and divisions, and even have the audacity to whisper that General McClellan understands their programme and is not unfavorable to working up to it.'
Fortunately the great mass of the Northern people can not be affected by such traitorous tricks. There is but one party in the country, and that is the Union and the War party. Here and there a coward may waver and be frightened at the prospect of a Democratic opposition raising its head successfully to withstand the great onward movement, but his quavering voice will be unheard in the great cry for battle. We have accepted this war with all its fearful risks, and we will abide by it. We will be true to our principle of a united country, we will be true to our word to crush rebellion, and we will be true to our brave soldiers who are fighting manfully for the right. If we adhere steadfastly to these resolutions, we shall have no cause to dread traitors within or foes without the loyal Union.
When the World's Fair was held in 1851, in London, Punch, moved by the intensest spirit of British conceit, politely suggested that it would be a good plan to have placards containing the words, 'It is good to have the conceit taken out of us,' in all languages, hung all over the Exhibition—the intention being to courteously intimate to foreigners their general inferiority to John Bull. Certainly it is a good thing to have the conceit taken out of us—with the saving clause added by our contributor, H.P.L.—'so that it be not done with the corkscrew of ignorance,' or of conceit itself, as is generally the case when English wit attempts such extraction. Yet it must be admitted that in one thing Brother Jonathan has very fairly had the conceit taken out of him—which need not have been, had he only attended to the lessons taught him by John Bull and Jean Crapaud.
We refer to the matter of iron-clad vessels of war. England already had her 'Warrior,' and France her 'Gloire,' with all their resistant powers fully tested by experiment, and yet this war had progressed one year without finding our Government in possession of a single iron-mail steamer. Our foes, with many disadvantages, had more wit, and gained a victory the more galling, because in naval matters we of the North claim in ability to rank with England herself. Perhaps history contains no parallel instance of such negligence, such weakness. It is a matter calling for investigation and exemplary punishment. The guilt lies somewhere, and must be atoned for.
It is, however, interesting to remark, that in this, as in so many other matters, science is very rapidly changing the character of warfare. In a few years the war-navies of the world will consist almost exclusively of iron-mail steamers, since no other vessel can resist their attacks. Yet these steamers, though far more expensive than the old wooden hulks—so expensive that the 'Warrior' alone caused an outcry in England as a national burden—can readily sink one another in a few minutes by the use of the prow, or by returning to the primitive cock-fighting fashion in vogue among the iron-beaked galleys of earliest antiquity.
Will it pay, under such extraordinary conditions of naval warfare, to fight at all? will probably be the next question, asked. When a few minutes may witness the literal sinking of a few millions of dollars, tax-paying people will begin to stand aghast. The very idea of England and America playing a game of war with such checks, is as terrible as it is startling; it is like the suggestion to fight out a duel with columbiads, or as the two Kentucky engineers are said to have done, with full-steamed locomotives in collision. No patriotism, no wealth, no sacrifice, can endure such drafts as the loss of iron-clad navies would involve. War would eat itself up.
Possibly genius may contrive vulcanized gutta-percha or other resistant steamers which can neither be billed nor gaffed, shot nor slashed into sinking—vessels beyond all capacity for bathos, and no more to be persuaded into going under than was the black Baptist convert of David Crockett's story. What would naval battles amount to between such invulnerables? The Roman mythology had a fable of a hare which had received from the gods the gift that it was never to be caught, while at the same time there was a hound which was destined to catch every thing he pursued. One day the hound began to chase the hare; Jupiter settled the question by changing them both to stone. Paradoxes can only be solved by annihilation. When war becomes, by the aid of science, all-destructive, yet all-resistant, it must perish. History shows a gradual decrease of deaths in proportion to improvements in destruction of life. It is gratifying to reflect, that this war, by developing the full capacities of iron-plated vessels, has made a most important advance toward the impossibility of warfare.
It is amusing to see how decisively, yet with what preposterous ignorance of any thing like the true state of affairs in this country, the English press informs the public as to the 'ex or inexpediency' of President Lincoln's Message.
Not one of its editors has, as yet, had the grace or wit to discover that, simply as a precedent and as a record, it puts an entirely new face on the war, by manifesting a policy on the part of Government. Not one seems to appreciate that the slaveholder who, after its publication, loses his human chattels by the hap of war, has only himself to thank for his loss. If Cuffy runs away, when the army comes, by what earthly show of sense or justice does the master complain, who has refused to accept payment for him? Dans la guerre, comme a la guerre—in war-time, people must accept of war's chances.