Patience! why,'tis the soul of peace;
Of all the virtues, the nearest kin to heaven.
It makes men act like gods. The Best of Men
That e'er wore earth about him was a Sufferer,
A soft, meek, patient, humble, tranquil spirit,
The first true Gentleman that ever breathed.
REWARDING THE ARMY.
It is a brave thing that we can truly say, after more than a year of fierce hostilities, the war in which this country is engaged goes on with undiminished—nay, with increasing Northern spirit. The enemy has been obliged to resort to forced conscription, and to declare every man within its limits a soldier, while we have not as yet had recourse to drafting; nor, as the late sudden call showed, nearly exhausted our volunteers. A thousand, and even fifteen hundred dollars have been offered in Virginia newspapers for a substitute, and yet behind this there has followed an Executive order for enrolling every man in the army whether he have purchased a substitute or not. 'Our flag floats over Nashville and Natchez, over Memphis and New-Orleans, over Norfolk and Pensacola, over Yorktown and Newbern.' We have girded them in on the Mississippi, on the Atlantic, and on the Gulf. We know that they are destitute of almost every thing save mere food and arms, and that every month sinks them deeper and deeper in destitution and misery. The war is on their own soil, and their own armies are a scourge and a curse to their own estates. Every where the plantation and the farm are made desolate—every where the direst distress is taking the place of comfort. And all this they brought on themselves by the most determined will. They believed that Northern men were all cowards and half-traitors—their allies and friends among us promised them easy victories and certain independence—they thought that the greed of money was stronger among us than the sense of dignity and honor—and now they are reaping their reward.
Yet despite the bitter need into which they have brought themselves, it does not seem that those of the South who are in earnest have lost any of their desperation, or gained a better opinion of their foes. Their journals still trumpet the loudest lies and the mass still believe that sooner or later their shattered bark will outride the battle and the storm, and float safely into the broad sea of independence. Would that they could see the North as it is, in all its comparative prosperity, with millions still left to volunteer, and with thousands of foreigners eagerly seeking for places in the fray. We have found it necessary to instruct our ministers and consuls abroad that we can not accept for the present any more of the many military officers of different nations who desire to fight for the stars and stripes. We have money in abundance, and there is no flinching at taxation—indeed, the great source of apprehension at present is an excess of 'flush times' such as is too apt to bring on a reaction. When the war broke out we had, indeed, divided counsels. The old Southern Democrats whined and yelped, and attempted 'peace-parties' and the like; but they have vanished, and traitors now confine themselves to less offensive measures, while their ranks have been woefully thinned. We may have disasters; nay, we can hardly hope to escape them. But in the present state of the war we may fairly boast of having the upper-hand. And the Northern tenacity which did not yield when misfortune lowered around, will not be likely to loose its hold now that it has learned to measure its might, man for man, with the arrogant enemy.
Under the wise and judicious policy inaugurated by President Lincoln, we see Slavery, the great cause of this trouble, in a fair way to disappear in a manner which can give offence to no one. His 'remuneration message'—the shrewdest document which ever emanated from an American Executive—shows itself, as events proceed, to be a master-stroke of genius. The longer the cotton States prolong their resistance, the more precarious does slave property become, and the more inclined are the men of the tobacco States to sell their human chattels. Already in Kentucky, Tennessee, Maryland, and Delaware, people are longing to 'realize' something on what bids fair to become altogether intangible amid the turns and tides of skirmishes and battles. Meanwhile with every day's delay Emancipation, as a predetermined necessity, gains ground among the people, and very rapidly indeed in the army. It was the lowest and most tyrannical form of an aristocracy—that of slaveholding planterdom—which caused and is still causing all this trouble, and it is beginning to work its way into the minds of the multitude that it is hardly worth while to risk every thing, and see the real criminals reïnstated after all in their privileges and possessions, when the one can only serve to continue the old sore, while the other might be better employed in free labor. And better employed, we may add, in rewarding those noble men whose lives were risked in defense of our liberties.
This consideration brings us to the very important question: How shall we reward our army, and what should be its future mission in the reconstruction which every freeman will be called to aid?
There is no use in disguising facts, shirking inevitable issues, or trying to cheat either destiny or honest labor. We have got this question of rewarding our soldiers with the property of rebels, before us, and must meet it squarely. The pro-slavery Democratic press may oppose it, as they have been doing, with all the malignity which their treasonable friendship for the South may inspire; but we have an inevitable road before us over which we must travel, and it would be well to consider it betimes, that we may tread it fairly and smoothly, and not be dragged along shrieking, by a pitiless destiny.
There are two good reasons why we should begin to consider betimes, the expediency of rewarding our army with Southern lands. The one is the necessity of a future Northern policy; the other the claim of the army to such reward.
If when this war is concluded, our Government is to have a policy or a principle, it should manifestly be that of reïnstating itself in power, in consolidating that power, and in acting as a powerful unity, according to the letter and the spirit of the Constitution. The Constitution—bear that word well in mind—the Constitution which suffers no State to usurp a single power belonging to the General Government, and which was expressly framed for the purpose of making all its freemen the citizens of one great nation. Let the reader consult the Constitution, study its unmistakable plan of national integrity and of state subordination, and then reflect whether, according to its spirit, any and every mere state privilege which may be claimed should not yield to the paramount claim of the Union?