that amelioration of it will not do; that it is quite as much in the interest of the North as of the South to stop it; that the South represents in it not only her .constitutional rights, but the traditions of the past and the whole cause of American liberty, and that in the defeat of the Confederate arms must go down the liberties of the North along with the independence of the South. Such intelligent sympathy is of real value to the South. But the party which goes so far is much weaker in numbers than is generally supposed by the Confederate people, and may be counted by hundreds, while the other classes, who all come, by a very violent connection, under the common catch-word of "Secesh," number thousands. It is especially represented by the New York News: a newspaper which is a marked exception to the rules of Yankee journalism in its decency and humanity of style, no less than in the real value of its arguments, and which may be taken as one undoubted, however small, example of Northern virtue in this war.

I must always remember for myself the kindness and encouragement I obtained from many members of this peace party proper of the North-those persons who held to their noble and simple faith despite political persecution, despite social ban, despite every injury and insult that could be offered them. Few they are; but let the South give them the full measure of their reward. I could not escape friends such as these. They invited me into their families, and in quite half a dozen places in Brooklyn (where I chose to reside in a hotel) I had constantly offered to me the privileges of a home, and could always obtain an unfailing and affectionate welcome. Again and again I have met persons who would say to me: "Can we do nothing for you? Do not hesitate to state any of your necessities. There is nothing too great or too small you may ask from your friends in the North." I had no occasion for myself, or opportunity for those of my countrymen less fortunate, to tax such friendship; but its cordial and persistent offers made none the less impression upon

me.

But these people, it must be constantly remembered, are too small an element in Northern poi es to demand, in that respect, much consideration. They constitute merely the skeleton of a party. There is so little virtue in public opinion in the North, so little that can be effected there by appeal to principle, that we must look for any considerable enlargement of the peace party in the North to the force of military successes, or the exhibition of undismayed endurance on the part of the South. We shall scarcely make converts or reclaim backsliders unless by such persuasion. It is the military situation from which

the North takes its practical thought and purpose; and this which contains the only hope of the South.

a

While referring to party opinions in the North, I may extend the allusion to a certain ill-defined collection of people found in the bulk of Southern refugees and residents in the North. These people are very much abused in the New York newspapers, and deservedly so those of them who have preferred a cowardly ease in the enemy's country to the hard but honourable trials of war in their own. These derelict Confederates are the most contemptible of creatures. But it is only just to say that they do not broadly include all that much-reviled class of Southern refugees in the enemy's country. There are exceptions; some few and honourable men detained in the North by the confines of their domestic life, doing a good work, contributing to our prisoners, not noisy in their demonstrations, but holding their opinions decorously within the sanctity of ⚫their homes, or within the pale of the close society of those 'who think with them. But there are hundreds and thousands of these sympathetic absentees who, in a spirit of the sheerest cowardice and the grossest selfishness, exploit their Southern "patriotism" in the garish hotels of New York, and are trying to pass their time pleasantly among the creature comforts of Yankeedom, while the beloved people of the South are left to take for themselves all the privation and risk of the war. Many of them live extravagantly; not a few gamble in the Gold Rooms. And these refugees, dough-faced adventurers, fugitives from the conscription, and cowards of every stripe, who are bloating and pampering themselves in Yankeedom, talk "secesh" as loudly and bravely in the New York Hotel as in the Spottswood at Richmond. Despite the civilities the writer met in this former house, and its singular freedom from the pinchbeck of Yankee hotel life, he must remember occasions of disgust in seeing so many spruce "refugees" feasting, and wining, and guzzling in the delicate sops of New York luxury, talking Southern "patriotism" as fierce as baited bears, and in the next breath comparing their gains in cotton and the profits of their last mysterious trips to Nashville and New Orleans.

It is singular that this class are invariably the trumpeters of President Davis. They are so excessively patriotic that they worship him morning, day and night; they resent everything that does not represent the Confederacy in the colours of the rose; and every expression of Southern opinion, no matter what its manly and incontestable proofs of attachment to the Confederate cause, th at

implies a mistake on the part of President Davis, is fiercely denounced and forthwith tomahawked by these vagabond knights of Seccssia.

The writer was informed that this peculiar Davis mania, at the expense of everybody else and every interest else in the Confederacy, prevails as much among the Confederate absentees and "sympathizers" in London and in Paris as in New York. This is not unaccountable, at least in good part. Many of these creatures are the agents and emissaries of President Davis, and, through his partiality, are reaping rich pecuniary reward in pretending to political adventures in the North and in Europe, and in flying certain financial kites for their own benefit. Thus the writer recollects to have met, in a company in New York, a little puddy gentleman, ruddy with good living, who could not be persuaded that Mr. Davis was not the "Moses" of Confederate deliverance. At parting, he hoped that the writer would recommend a certain financial scheme that a certain friend of his had gone to Richmond to lay before the authorities, by which millions of dollars were to be raised in Europe, after the approved fashion of extracting sunbeams from cucumbers.

The "sympathizers" the writer has described may well dread a party in the South sworn to uphold the standards of citizenship and society in the Confederacy; pledged to disown them when their tardy steps shall be turned towards our liberated country; and jealously resolved to preserve the fruits of our independence for those who have watered them with their blood, or brought them to their perfection by unwearied labour and sincere solicitude.

CHAPTER XII.

THE TRUE VALUE OF THE MILITARY SITUATION IN THE NORTH.--The Question of Endurance on the part of the Confederacy.

November 18.—An encouragement for the Confederate States in this war, of which our people have but little idea, is to be found in the true value of the military situation. The military successes of the North in the past campaign, and the glittering surface of prosperity in its borders, may incline the South to momentary fits of despondency, and to uncomfortable comparisons of resources; but when we.come to reflect bravely and intelligently upon these, there are found causes of encouragement, which, although not obvious, are none the less real.

When a Confederate obtains the opportunity of observation in the North, and looks only at the surface of things, he is powerfully and painfully struck with the contrast they present to his scanty and war-ridden country. In some respects the contrast is appalling. He sees their large cities choked with a superabundance of able-bodied men; he visits military depots bursting with war material; he learns in Wall street that, despite the expenditures of the war, vast additions have been made to Yankee wealth, in the development of mineral resources, copper, iron and silver, along the whole slope of the Rocky Mountains; he is told that petroleum alone will, in a few years, be an article of export to the extent of one hundred and fifty millions of dollars, and that it has already founded-much more so than "codfish"--a distinct aristocracy in the North; he sees everywhere an almost riotous material plenty; he finds New York drunk with wealth and extravagance, every day vomiting into Broadway and the labyrinths of Central Park a dizzy stream of luxurious dissipation, and an endless procession of the triumphs of "Shoddy." The first imprsssion of such a contrast, is that of immense endurance in the North, and the practical superiority of her war power in men, material and finances, over the military means of the Sout. That is the impression which generally comes back to us from flying

visitors to the North, whose observations cannot be otherwise than hasty and superficial. Yet it is of all first impressions the one most thoroughly false.

The shock of contrast is soon over to the Confederate who, remains in the North long enough to make a steady examination of the real spirit of the North in this war, and its relation to the apparent superabundance of resources in men and means. He gets a new light when he penetrates the surface of things; and if there is one truth which he discovers more plainly than any other in his observations in the North, it is that the resources, which at first struck him so strongly, are but to a litile extent practically available for the purposes of the

war.

It is necessary to come to facts to show this. It was my fortune to be in the North during the great exigency of recruiting their armies after Grant's butchery of the old Potomac veterans, and the immense expenditure of Yankee life in the summer's campaign. The system of Yankee recruiting was then, as I saw it, debased downright to the expedient of foreign enlistments and the arming of the negro. It is these means--scarcely anything more than these— which is recruiting the armies of the enemy. Their whole system of recruiting has passed to this wretched shift; and beyond the short life of such a military expedient, the South has little or nothing to fear. It is positively known that the Yankee armies are recruiting almost exclusively with negro troops; and information has been given me that at least three-fourths of the army of the James are composed of negro troops.

It is not asserting too much to say that the North must soon be practically more pinched for the want of arms-bearing men than is the Confederacy. The writer has not caught at loose assertions or idle rumours. The information comes from a general officer in the Yankee armies around Richmond, that the half-million draft yielded not more than seventy thousand effective soldiers. It was patched up with infamous frauds and absurd "commutations" to conciliate the opposition in the Presidential election of last November. In that election. the vote of all the Yankee armies around Richmond was eighteen thousand, that being the proportion of native born and naturalized citizens of the United States in the combined hosts of Ulysses Grant and Benjamin Franklin Butler.

The difficulties of recruiting in the North are fast verging to the necessity of an actual conscription. To a great extent they must reach this dreaded and dire conclusion in the next call for men. It is only necessary to apply the invariable law of supply and demand to show what must be the difficulties in raising men, when we find bounties paid in New York exceeding one thousand dollars