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a head, the price of a single soldier. The bloated metropolis of the North may be able to afford such a largess. But in the rural districts, in the counties, and in the small corporations of the North, the system of bounties is already broken down. Counties in the State of New York have been designated to the writer which had already expended, each, about a million and a half dollars in buying human flesh; and others were named which had accumulated, on account of military bounties alone, a debt exceeding the sum total of taxable values within their jurisdiction.

It is under the pressure of the practical want of arms-bearing men, and in view of the fatal conclusion of an actual conscription, that the question has become uppermost in the Northern mind, how long the South can endure the necessities of the war. This simple question of endurance has entirely superseded all other methods of the solution of the war, all former questions of foreign interference, political revolutions, financial convulsions, &c.; and it is to all Northern men who discern the signs of the times, the one practical test that is to determine the destiny of the South. The writer is fully assured that all intelligent men of the North, including even leading Black Republicans who have -not hesitated to confess themselves, are agreed that the North will never stand an actual conscription, and that if the war is pushed to that point by unflagging resolution, and unbroken endurance on the part of the South, it is just there that it will break down by the weight of an insufferable burden put upon one of the belligerents. The conclusion is not an extravagant one. In the South the conscription is doubtless imposed upon some few unwilling individuals; but in the North, with its inferiour motive in the war, and its peculiar character, it is utterly impossible to execute a conscription law upon a people who are wholly and absolutely opposed to it, who are not fighting under any doctrine of paramount necessity, and who have already given the most abundant proofs, that even the Yankee God of money is but little effective in enticing them to the battle-field.*

*The city of New York is scoured by "bounty agents;" yet even at this great centre of population in the North, these men find it necessary to their business to kidnap and drug recruits, and to entrap them by the most monstrous devices. Men are systematically made drunk to procure their consent to enlist; simple foreigners are put in "the Toombs," on false chargess trumped up in emigrant boarding houses, and then persuaded that their only means of extrication is to go into the army; the drinking-houses, the gambling hells, the low boarding-houses on the wharves, every sink of iniquity, and every abode of ignorance, is constantly watched by the bounty agent for his victim. These practices are the occurrences of every day in New York. I happened to be cognizant of a recruiting affair, which took place in the hotel where I

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It is almost impossible to describe the dread with which the Northern people contemplate the slightest possibility of a conscription. Even the draft of last summer, which only slightly threatened such a conclusion, was shunned as the plague. When it was thought that some of the ward quotas would be enforced in Baltimore, hundreds of persons left their homes and families there, fled for shelter to New York, and for months remained there in close concealmeut. It is well known that that city must be gingerly touched by the authorities of Lincoln; for it contains seventy thousand Irish, and, what is more, one hundred and fifty thousand people of the Catholic faith, who constitute in mass a pretty large seed of revolution, and who are considered to have made up their minds about the draft in the summer of 1863.

Observations which the writer made in the North, with ceaseless industry and under the stimulus of constant curiosity, filled his mind with the broad and strong conviction that never was the independence of the South more firmly assured than at this time, on the single condition that the spirit of the people and the army does not break by some unworthy impatience, or is not deliberately broken down by insane persistence in folly on the part of Davis and his clique of toadies and encouragers. A Northern conscription is the goal to which the South must press, and which already it closely approaches. A little endurance and it is won. It is the vital question to all intelligent persons in the North, how long our people will endure. They laugh at our expectations of political revolutions * or financial rupture in the North; and they contend that the time is past when we may expect to win our independence by any grand military coup, or force of military successes. All these calculations are lightly or insolently regarded by Northern men. Their real anxiety is the measure of endurance on the part of the South. In a large intercourse with Northern politicians, the writer found that their great curiosity was as to the real spirit of the South, and the questions of thinking men among them invariably went to the point of the probable term of Southern endurance. He saw the value of this quality in Northern eyes. He became thoroughly convinced that by force of it alone the South would obtain her independence as sure as the sun would rise on the morrow;

resided in Brooklyn. Two men had picked up in Broadway an idiotic negro boy. They enticed him into the hotel, confined him in an upper room, and for a week plied the poor creature with confectionery, bon-bons and the best French brandy; until, at last, obtaining his consent to enlist, they stuffed him into a hack and drove him to the nearest recruiting office. They gave the negro one hundred dollars in small bills, and pocketed the balance of the bounty.-I may add that one of these parties was a Southern "refugee," and boasted of his exploit.

that such was the silent but general concession of the Northern mind; and that the future of the Confederate States was just at this time, and in the approaching exigency of a Northern conscription, brightened with a surer prospect of independence than any former situation of affairs had ever afforded.

There are two parties in the North, perhaps equally intelligent, and each claiming to draw their opinions from Southern sources of information, which differ as to the real spirit of the South: one claiming that it is resolute and even in the last necessity desperate; the other contending that it is fast being broken by reverses, and will end in submission. One finds this question in every circle in the North. Reliable information upon it is far more valuable to the Washington Government than maps of all the fortifications in the Confederate States. To convince the North of the spirit of the Southern people, is more important than half a dozen victories, for it is to convince them of the hopelessness of the war, and to put before their eyes the immediate necessity of conscription.

It is the simple lesson of resolution which the South must learn. It is the lesson for all events. When there is no occasion for hope, then make it the season of desperation; for this last quality is quite as good to dissuade the Yankee from the war as confidence itself. It will be easily inspired even in the worst extremity the future can possibly have, by a simple regard of the consequences of subjugation.

'It is useless to expatiate, unless to those who are willfully blind, the theme of subjugation. If the spirit of desperate resolution has not already been drawn from what is known of the enemy's warfare, it will not be easily provoked by any other arguments. That spirit once fully demonstrated to the North, and the war is at an end. It is the only price of peace. There is not a scintilla of hope for the South in any political movement, or any peace negotiations in the North. It may be subjugation under a disguise, or subjugation by steps, but it is subjugation at last.

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In view of the fate which threatens us in submission, and in view of the reward assured to us by simple perseverance, will the South falter? Will she who has endured so much fall away in a dastardly despair, and count all for naught, because, while she has strength, she yet has not resolution for what remains? Will she meanly preak down in the last stretch of the course, when the prize and the sanctuary glitter before her eyes and the pursuing tread of mortal foe is behind her? History records the failure of many revolutions in their first stage: it is not often disgraced by the story of surrender because

of the delay, and not the uncertainty of success. Surely there is no place in it for the repetition of this infrequent story at the hands of a people already ranked by former tests and endurances of this war among the most heroic of mankind.

CHAPTER XIII.

JOURNAL NOTES.-Letter from a Catholic Friend-An Evening Party in Brooklyn-Political Preaching-Renegade Virginians.

November 20.-I have received a letter from a Northern lady which is so full of sympathy and of generous Christian sentiment for my distressed country, that I have taken the pains to transcribe some passages from it in my journal. It is in reply to what I wrote, perhaps too gloomily, of my situation: my ears assailed by notes of Yankee triumph over late misfortunes of my country, and my heart filled with anxiety on account of the disappointment of my exchange:

"It is hard-perhaps the hardest of hard things-to believe, to wait, to look up. The other day I was utterly disheartened about our cause. News came to us of grave reverses. One hope after another died out. And then white ashes lay cold and cheerless upon my heart Then my good husband, who is always a comfort to me, brought the prayer-book, and read some of those verses so full of sympathy and so suggestive of faith and hope. So I, dear friend, would sit down by you and say to you words uttered by One who suffered. Listen: Take heed unto me and hear me: how I mourn and am vexed. They are minded to do me mischief, so maliciously are they set against me. My heart is disquieted within me; fearfulness and trembling are come upon me; my enemies are daily on hand to swallow me up. They daily mistake my words; all they imagine is to do me evil. They mark my steps when they lay wait for me; even mine own familiar friend whom I trusted hath laid great wait for me. Nevertheless, I have put my trust in God: I will not be afraid what man can do unto me. Be Thou my stronghold, whereunto I may always resort. Thou hast promised to help me, for Thou art my House of defence and my Castle.'

"It is sad indeed to think of the thousands who are lying in misery all over our land; and all the while deeper and wider flows the sea of blood. Ah, we need all that God can give us of grace and strength, or our human hearts would break. I would say human words of hope to you if I could. I have found how vain is the help of man. But, dear friend, an old, quaint writer has said: 'In Man's extremity is God's opportunity.' I wish you would write fully, unreservedly. I shall not wonder if you do not. It is much to ask you to take me wholly on faith. At any rate, unless you tell me that my letters annoy you, or subject you to inconvenience or suspicion, I shall write you under cover to

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“I got a letter from some of your poor friends sent on for exchange. They are lying within sight of the haven where they would be; but waiting and fearing every hour Lest they be

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