of the enemy, commended his memory to the hearts of his countrymen.

Whatever might have been the depression of the public mind of the South by the Rich Mountain disaster, it was more than recovered by news from other quarters. The same day that the unfavorable intelligence from Rich Mountain reached the government at Richmond, the telegraph brought, by a devious route, the news of the battle of Carthage in Missouri. The blow given to the enemy at this distant point, was the first of the brilliant exploits which afterwards made the Missouri campaign one of the most brilliant episodes of the war. It had gone far to retrieve the fortunes of an empire that was hereafter to be added to the Southern Confederacy, and assure the promise that had been made in the proclamation of the gallant Gen. Price of that State-"a million of such people as the citizens of Missouri were never yet subjugated, and, if attempted, let no apprehension be felt for the result." But of this hereafter.

On the anniversary of the Fourth of July, the Federal Congress met at Washington. Galusha A. Grow, a Pennsylvania Abolitionist, and an uncompromising advocate of the war, was elected Speaker of the House. The meeting of this Congress affords a suitable period for a statement of the posture of political affairs, and of the spirit which animated the North, with respect to existing hostilities.

In his message, Mr. Lincoln denounced the idea of any of the States preserving an armed neutrality in the war, having particular reference to the continued efforts of Governor Magoffin, of Kentucky, to maintain a condition of neutrality on the part of that State. Mr. Lincoln declared that if armed neutrality were permitted on the part of any of the States, it would soon ripen into disunion; that it would build impassable walls along the line of separation; and it would tie the hands of the Unionists, while it would free those of the Insurrectionists, by taking all the trouble from Secession, except that which might be expected from the external blockade. Neutrality, he said, gave to malcontents disunion without its risks, and was not to be tolerated, since it recognized no fidelity to the Constitution or obligation to the Union.

Kentucky was not unreasonably accounted a part of the

Northern government. But with an outrage of the plainest doctrines of the government, and a practical denial not only of every thing like the rights of States, but even of their territorial integrity, the Northwestern portion of Virginia, which had rebelled against its State government, was taken into the membership of the Federal Union as itself a State, with the absurd and childish addition of giving to the rebellious counties the name of "Virginia." A Convention of the disaffected Northwestern counties of Virginia had been held at Wheeling, on the 13th day of May, and after a session of three days, decided to call another Convention, to meet on the 11th of June, subsequent to the vote of the State on the Ordinance of Secession. The Convention reorganized the counties as a member of the Federal Union: F. W. Pierpont was elected governor; and W. T. Willie and the notorious John S. Carlile, both of whom had already signalized their treason to their State by their course in the Convention at Richmond, were sent as representatives of "Virginia" to the United States Senate, in which absurd capacity they were readily received.

The message of the President gave indications of a determined and increased prosecution of hostilities. It called for an army of four hundred thousand men, and a loan of four hundred millions of dollars. This call was a curious commentary upon the spirit and resources of the people, who it had been thought in the North would be crushed out by the three months' levies before the Federal Congress met in July to decide upon what disposition should be made of the conquered States.

The statements of Mr. Lincoln's fiscal secretary were alarming enough; they showed a state of the treasury unable even to meet the ordinary expenditures of the government, and its resources were now to be taxed to the last point of ingenuity to make for the next fiscal year the necessary provision of four hundred and eighty millions of dollars, out of an actual revenue the first quarter of which had not exceeded five millions. The ordinary expenditures of the Federal government for the fiscal year ending June 30th, 1862, were estimated at eighty millions of dollars; the extraordinary expenditures, on the basis of increased military operations, at four hundred millions. To meet these large demands of the civil and war service, Secretary

Chase confessed to a receipt of but five millions per quarter from the "Morrill" tariff, showing that at this rate of the receipt of customs, the income of the government would be twenty millions per year against nearly five hundred millions of prospective outlay.

It was proposed in this financial exigency to levy specific duties of about thirty-three per cent. on coffee, tea, sugar, molasses, and syrup, which might yield twenty millions a year; it was hoped by some modification of the Morrill tariff, with respect to other articles, to increase its productiveness from twenty to thirty-seven millions; the revenue from the sale of public lands was estimated at three millions; and it was timidly proposed that a tax should be levied upon real property of one-third or one-fifth of one per cent., to produce twenty millions additional. Thus by means of—

The Northern government proposed to eke out the means or meeting its ordinary expenses, leaving the monstrous balance of four hundred millions of dollars to be raised by a sale of bonds.

The financial complications of the government of Mr. Lincoln were in striking contrast with the abundant and easy means which the Southern Confederacy had, at least so far, been able to carry on the war. The latter had been reduced to a paper currency, but it had for the basis of its currency the great staple of cotton,* which in the shape of a produce loan was practically pledged to the redemption of the public debt.

* The whole cotton crop of America, in 1860, was 4,675,770 bales and of this, 3,697,727 bales were exported, and 978,043 bales used at home. England alone took 2,582,000 bales, which amounted to about four-fifths of her entire consumption. The cotton-fields of the Southern States embrace an area of 500,000 square miles, and the capital invested in the cultivation of the plant amounts to $900,000,000. Seventy years ago, the exports of our cotton were only 420 bales-not one-tenth of the amount furnished by several countries to England. Now, the South furnishes five-sevenths of the surplus cotton product of the entire world

Prospects were entertained of a speedy raising of the blockade, the disappointment. of which, at a later day, drove the Confederacy to other expedients of revenue, in a war tax, &c.; but, at the time of the comparison of the financial condition of the two governments, the Confederate currency was accounted quite as good as gold, as the cotton and tobacco once in the market would afford the Southern government the instant means to discharge every cent of its indebtedness.

The Federal Congress commenced its work in a spirit that essentially tended to revolutionize the political system and ideas of the North itself. It not only voted to Mr. Lincoln the men and supplies he asked for, but the first days of its session were signalized by a resolution to gag all propositions looking towards peace, or any thing else than a prosecution of the war; by another, to approve the acts done by the President without constitutional authority, including his suspension of the habeas corpus; and by the introduction of a bill to confiscate the property of "rebels."

The pages of history do not afford a commensurate instance of the wide opposition in the social and political directions of two nations who had so long lived in political union and intercourse as the North and the South. While the latter was daily becoming more conservative and more attached to existing institutions, the North was as rapidly growing discontented,

* A type of the conservatism of the Southern revolution-its attachment to the past-was vividly displayed in the adoption of its national ensign, a blue union with a circle of stars, and longitudinal bars, red, white, and red, in place of "the stripes" of the flag of the old government. The present Confederate flag was balloted for in the Provisional Congress, and was selected by a majority of votes out of four different models. At the time of the early session of Congress at Montgomery, the popular sentiment was almost unanimous, and very urgent, that the main features of the old Federal Constitution should be copied into the new government, and that to follow out and give expression to this idea, the flag should be as close a copy as possible of the Federal ensign. A resolution was introduced in the Provisional Congress to the effect that the flag should be as little different as possible from that of the Federal government; which resolution was vigorously opposed by Mr. Miles, of South Carolina, who was then chairman of the Flag Committee. The design recommended by Mr. Miles, but voted down, has since been adopted as the battle flag of Generals Johnston and Beauregard. It is a blue saltier (or Maltese cross), with inner rows of stars, on a red field-the emblem of the saltier (saltere, to eap) being appropriately that of progress and power. The two other competing designs, from which our present flag was selected, were, one, an almost

restless, radical, and revolutionary. The people of the North had passed the stage of pure Democracy, and inaugurated military despotism. They, in effect, had changed their form of government, while vainly attempting to preserve their territorial ascendency. They charged the South with attempting revolution, when it was only fighting for independence; while they, themselves, actually perpetrated revolution rather than forego the advantages of a partial and iniquitous Union. The South, in the midst of a war of independence-a war waged not to destroy, but to preserve existing institutions-was recurring to the past, and proposing to revive conservative ideas rather than to run into new and rash experiments.

The war had already developed one great moral fact in the North of paramount interest. It was the entire willingness of the people to surrender their constitutional liberties to any government that would gratify their political passions.

This peculiarity of the condition of Northern society, was more significant of its disintegration and revolutionary destiny than all the other circumstances and consequences of the war combined, in loss of trade, prostration of commerce, and poverty and hunger of the people. It was the corruption of the public virtue. The love of constitutional liberty was degraded to political hatreds. While these were gratified, the Northern people were willing to surrender their liberties to their panderers at Washington. Without protest, without opposition, in silent submission, or even in expressions stimulating and encouraging the despot who stript them of their rights, to still further excesses, they had seen every vestige of constitutional liberty swept away, while they imagined that their greed of resentment towards the South was to be satisfied to its fill. They had seen the liberties of the people strangled, even in States remaining in the Union. They had seen the writ of habeas corpus denied, not only by the minions of Abraham Lincoln in Maryland, but by the commanding officers of Forts Hamilton and Lafayette. They had seen, not only the rights of free speech, but the sanctity even of private correspondence, violated by the seizure

exact reproduction of the Federal stars and stripes, the only variation being that of a blue stripe, and the other a simple blue circle or rim, on a red field The consideration that determined the selection of the present flag was its similarity to that of the old government.