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did the same at the beginning of every battle. It is, in fact, a physical effect, independent of the will. But if you could then only feel how each shot electrifies you! It is like a whip on a racer's legs. The balls whistle past you, turn up the earth around you, kill one, wound another, and you hardly notice them. You grow intoxicated. The smell of gunpowder mounts to your brain. The eye becomes bloodshot, and the look is fixed on the enemy. There is something of all the passions in that terrible passion excited in a soldier by the sight of blood, and the tumult of battle. Everybody who has tried it, testifies to the peculiar intoxication that is produced by being in a battle. There is an infatuating influence about the smell of powder, the shrill whistle of a bullet, and the sight of human blood, that instantly transforms men from cowards to heroes, from women sometimes to monsters. None can tell the nature or mystery of that influence, but those who have been in the affray themselves." What a brutal, fiendish effect!

THE SPIRIT OF WAR.-During the war of our Revolution, a detachment of American troops was stationed on Harleam Heights, N. Y., in view of an expected attack from the British. On a certain day the alarm was given, and a company of volunteers went out to met the enemy. As they came within sight, the American officer ordered a part of his men to lie flat on the ground, and let those in the rear advance to meet the first fire of the British. As these fell, killed or wounded, the others were to rise and receive the next shower of balls. Among the latter was a young fifer, who, to win his share of military fame, volunteered in the skirmish; and in the order of retreat, he received a bullet in the back, which was never taken out, though the life of the individual was prolonged to eighty-four years. The writer has heard him say, that when the recruits were ordered to fire, the young fifer advanced, his nerves braced to the most desperate act. The groans of his dying countrymen who had just fallen around him, the roar of the cannon, the scent of powder, and the music of the band, goaded him to madness. He fixed his eye on a British soldier before him, and had but one desire in his heart-to fire and kill him! He supposed his fire was effectual, as he saw him fall, at the same moment receiving the wound himself, which he supposed to be fatal. Reader, in what condition must the soul be that enters eternity from the battle field?

REBEL STATES.

THE TRUE KEY TO OUR REBELLION." This," says the Louisville Courier, a rebel journal, "has been called a fratricidal war by some, by others an irrepressible conflict between freedom and slavery; we respectfully take issue with the authors of both these ideas. We are not the brothers of the Yankees; and the slavery question is merely a pretext, not the cause of the war. The true irrepressible conflict lies fundamentally in the hereditary hostility, the sacred animosity and the eternal antagonism between the two races engaged. The Norman cavalier cannot brook the vulgar familiarity of the Saxon Yankee, while the latter is continually devising some plan to bring down his aristocratic neighbor to his own detested level. Thus was the contest waged in the old United States. So long as doughfaces were to be bought, and cowards to be frightened, so long was the Union tolerable to Southern men; but when, owing to divisons in our ranks, the Yankee hirelings placed one of their own spawn over us, political connection became unendurable, and separation necessary to preserve our self respect. As our Norman kinsmen in England, always a minority, have ruled their Saxon countrymen in political vassalage up to

the present day, so have we, the "slave oligarchs," governed the Yankees till within a twelvemonth. We framed the Constitution, for seventy years moulded the policy of the government, and placed our own men, or Northern men with Southern principles," in power.

On the 6th of November, 1860, the Puritans emancipated themselves, and are now in violent insurrection against their former owners! This insane holiday freak, however, will not last long; for dastards in fight, and incapable of self-government, they will inevitably fall again under the control of the superior race. A few more Bull Run thrashings will bring them once more under the yoke, as docile as the most loyal of our Ethiopian 'chattels.'

THE MORAL CHARACTER OF THE REBELLION.-This rebellion begins in an outrage upon many of the clearest obligations of Natural Religionloyalty, love of country, fidelity to public trusts, gratitude for honors bestowed, truth and manhood in the discharge of obligations voluntarily assumed, nay, eagerly sought. How many of the leaders of this rebellion are free from the stain on their personal honor of deliberately transgressing some or all those natural obligations which no contingency under heaven can justify any one in violating! We speak not of the mere fact of treason, as defined by human laws. What we speak of is the perfidy, in every revolting form, which has marked this treason in its birth, in its growth, and in its present frantic struggle. Men seeking to overthrow monuments, cemented by the blood of their immediate ancestors! Men dishonoring names illustrious through many generations! Men betraying their friends, their neighbors, their kindred! Men seducing children to take up arms against their parents, and then banding them with savages to desolate their own homes with fire and sword! It is a madness-a fearful madness. No madness can be greater, except the madness that could induce this great nation to suppose that God allows it to let this go unpunished.-Dr. Breckenridge.

SOUTHERN DEMORALIZATION. - The States repudiate their stocks, and the people select, as their leader and chief, the originator and leader of repudiation, thus making the trampling upon State obligations a principle of political action. Dishonesty on the part of the State is reflected in the taint of commercial horor. Merchants, whose wares were purchased on credit, complaining of no lack of ability to pay, and with abundant means of meeting their notes, repudiate their obligations, witnessing in triumph the bankruptcy which they bring upon their creditors. Collecting agents, holding funds collected for Northern ereditors, apply them to their own uses, making the war, which themselves aided in originating, the apology for their violation of faith. Cabinet ministers who, while in the service of the government, plundered the national treasury in aid of rebellion, and who, while enjoying the dignity and the emoluments of official place, played the peculator, the conspirator, and the spy, are placed high in position as honorable men. Military and naval officers, educated by the Federal government, clothed, fed, supported by it, desert the flag they had sworn to support, and join in a grand conspiracy for its destruction. With all this infamy attached to them, Southern society pets, and Southern chivalry honors them. Foreign ministers and consuls prostitute their positions to the injury of the nation they represent, play the traitor through the letters which gave them credence, and violate the instructions which they were sworn to respect. All these violations of duty, all these perversions of principle, all this trampling upon everything which honorable men all over the civilized world hold sacred, are accepted by the Southern mind as evidences of patriotism! Governors

applaud, and legislatures approve it all, while the universal sentiment pronounces it in accordance with Southern ethics, and the sanctions of chivalry!

The reason of this moral degradation will in vain be sought for in any peculiarity of the struggle now going on between the government and the disloyal States. There is nothing in that which should of itself turn all the moral perceptions upside down, or obliterate all instincts of integrity from the Southern heart. This treason is causeless enough; but their madness does not necessarily make scoundrels of an entire people. A false patriotism may impel men, in redress of imaginary wrongs, into treason. We can entertain a sort of respect for their motives, while we pity and condemn their folly. A State may rebel against the government; but this alone would not prompt it to repudiate its debts owing all over the commercial world. Individuals may join in the rebellion without violating their honor as commercial men. Officers may throw up their commissions without playing the peculator and the spy.

We repeat, that the cause of this general dereliction lies much deeper than the rebellion. It has its origin in the peculiar organization of Southern society is the legitimate and inevitable result of Southern institutions. The people who live upon the unrequited labor of a race, whose theory of civilization is based upon the perpetuation of a gigantic wrong, can have but small appreciation of the principles of right. The men whose prosperity is built upon the unpaid toil of millions, the gains of whose industry, above the simplest elements of a bare existence, constitute the staple of their wealth, can have but a faint perception of the true obligations of commercial honor. The law of the plantation is the caprice of the master; and this law shapes his character and his commercial ideas. A people who buy and sell men, can have but imperfect ideas of public morality, commercial integrity, or private faith. It is the outcropping of the demoralizing influences of slavery that we witness in this all-pervading degradation. The institution is bearing its legitimate fruits, as well in this repudiation of State obligations, this violation of commercial honor, this abuse of official trust, as in the treason that would overthrow the Republic itself.—New York Times.

THE OBJECT OF OUR REBELLION.-The rebels at length avow their aim to be the support of Slavery. "As the war," says the Richmond Examiner, "originated and is carried on in great part for the defence of the slaveholder in his property, rights, and the perpetuation of the institution, he ought to be first and foremost in aiding, by every means in his power, the triumph and success of our arms. The slaveholder ought to remember, that for every negro he thus furnishes he puts a soldier in the ranks.”

The N. Y. Observer, commenting on the above, "notes the exceeding wickedness of a war waged for such an unholy purpose. It was not enough that we had a constitution tolerating slavery in States that would have it, but a peaceful, prosperous, happy nation must be rent and drenched in fraternal blood for the perpetuation of the institution.' No war was ever originated among civilized and Christian people on a more flagitious pretext. In the annals of human crime, dark and bloody as they are, we note no avowal more unblushing and barbarous, none that so utterly ignores the character and obligations of Christian civilization and common humanity, none that so stamps a war with all the attributes of sin and shame to be borne in ages of history by those who began and carried it on for such a purpose. If this is the object, as its authors avow, and as Mr. VicePresident' Stephens more than intimated in the beginning, then it is right and proper that the Government should do all it can, in accordance with

the constitution and laws, to destroy that object, and, with it, all pretext for the war. This was never denied under any form of Government. While the traitor forfeits the protection of the throne, he also, by the laws of all lands, forfeits his property to the Government he would subvert. Proceeding on this principle, the path of our national duty is plain. Every man who rebels against the authority of the United States, may be justly deprived of his slaves as soon as the power of the Government is brought to bear upon the person so rebelling. It is said that there are no slaveholders in the rebel States who have not criminally participated in the rebellion. If this is so, all the slaves in those States may be emancipated by the regular operation of the laws of the land, just as rapidly as the military power of the country makes it possible to execute any law.

REBEL REQUITALS OF OUR LENITY AND KINDNESS.-There has been very little of that justice which usually accompanies military operations. Our soldiers have often been shot in a way which even by the laws of war is murder; prisoners are known to have been killed in cold blood; spies have frequented our camps; the parole has been broken; flags of truce have been fired upon; and all sorts of secret treachery practiced upon our men. Yet it would not be easy to find three instances where the strict retribution has followed which is meted out by martial law, and which, in any other part of the world, would have been exacted. The government has forborne, patiently submitting to insult and injury of every sort, until its forbearance must claim admiration, and excite astonishment wherever it is known and its motives understood. Apparently the government has acted upon the settled policy of enduring anything rather than suffer this war to become that ferocious struggle into which a civil war is apt to degenerate. The benevolence of this policy merited better success. Our troops seem to be considered fair game, and to murder them harmless pastime. What does Colonel Gordon say of the retreat through Winchester? "Males and females vied with each other in increasing the number of their victims by firing from the houses, throwing hand grenades, hot water, and missiles of every description." Whoever doubts that some of the population of that village did thus attempt to murder our troops, or whoever supposes that Winchester stands as a single case where forbearance has been followed by such ferocious conduct, may easily undeceive himself by inquiring of almost any well informed soldier in the army. The mild policy pursued has failed of its object. With no fear of punishment to restrain them, the rebels have tried to make this a savage and internecine contest in which the loyal are the principal sufferers. They inflict more than the rigors of martial law upon all who fail to comply with their notions of propriety, while, both as combatants and as non-combatants, they disregard habitually and with impunity, the dictates not only of military law but of humanity.-Boston Adv.

BEBEL PIRACY.

"No

THE PIRATE ALABAMA AN ILLUSTRATION OF BRITISH NEUTRALITY. other armed vessel" (except the Sumter,) says the Secretary of our Navy in his recent report, "has plundered our commerce, or inflicted injury on our countrymen, until within a recent period, when a steamer known as 290, or Alabama, built and fitted out in England,-a vessel that had not been in any port, or visited any waters but those of Great Britain,-went forth from that country ravaging, sinking, burning and destroying the property of our merchants, who, knowing our peaceful relations with England, and uninformed that such a cruiser had been permitted to leave Great Britain, were unprepared for such assault and devastation.

How far, and to what results, this abuse may be carried with impunity to the government which tolerates it, is a matter of grave consideration. The piratical privateer Alabama has no register nor record, no regular ship's papers, nor evidence of transfer, and no vessel captured by her has ever been sent into any port for adjudicatiou and condemnation. All forms of law which civilization has introduced to protect and guard private rights, and all those regulations of public justice which distinguish and discriminate the legalized naval vessel from the pirate, are disregarded and violated by this lawless rover, which, though built in and sailing from England, has no acknowledged flag or recognized nationality, or any accessible port to which to send any ship she may seize, nor any legal tribunal to adjudge her captures. Under the English flag in which they confided, and by the torch of the incendiary, appealing to their humanity, our merchantmen have been lured to destruction. She was built and fitted out in British ports, in flagrant violation of British law, and of the royal proclamation of neutrality; and I have reason to believe that her crew is composed almost exclusively of British subjects, or persons who pursuing a lawful voyage, would be entitled to ship and receive protection as British seamen.

Before this piratical cruiser left Great Britain, the authorities of that country were informed by the recognized official agents of this government of her character and purposes. The British government, thus invoked, came too late to prevent her sailing. To what extent, under these circumstances, the government of Great Britain is bound in honor and justice to make indemnification for the destruction of private property which this lawless vessel may perpetuate, is a question that may present itself for disposal. It is alluded to now and here, not only from a sense of duty towards our commercial interests and rights, but also by reason of the fact that recent intelligence indicates that still other vessels of a similar character are being fitted out in British ports to depredate upon our commerce. Our own cruisers not being permitted to remain in British ports to guard against these outrages, nor to coal while cruising, nor to repair damages in their harbors when injuries are sustained, the arrest of them is difficult, and attended with great uncertainty."

The false and heartless apologies attempted for these outrages by the English government and press, are for the most part insults to the common sense of our people. They surely cannot suppose us such dolts as to accept such transparent screens of latent but effective hostility. Unable to prevent these evasions of the law? Were there a will, it would soon find a way to stop them. If it were England's own case, she would do so at once with a witness and a vengeance. We cannot make our people feel otherwise about the matter; and such outrages, coupled with the fact that none, or next to none, but Englishmen violate our blockade, or aid our rebels with vessels, sailors, and munitions of war, are accumulating a list of grievances that will, we fear, put in serious peril the future peace of these countries. It becomes those who would deplore such a calamity, to begin now the work of its prevention by resisting and removing its causes.

WHAT OUR REBELLION COSTS.

The sum total of its malign influences upon our country and the world, no arithmetic can ever compute; but in the recent report of the Secretary of the Treasury, we get a glimpse of what it is costing us to suppress it. Were even this all, we could bear it; but all this vast and astounding amount of money is, after all, only a fraction of its evils. 'During the fiscal

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