a comparison of its public debt with the assets of the govern ment. The debt of the present United States, audited and float ing, calculated from data up to June 30, 1862, was at leas $1,300,000,000. The daily expenses, as admitted by the Chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means, was between three and four millions of dollars; the debt, in one year from this time, could not be less than two thousand five hundred millions of dollars. Under the census of 1860, all the property of every kind in all the States was estimated at less than $12,500,000,000. Since the war commenced, the depreciation has been at least one-fourth $3,175,000,000. From $9,375,000,000 deduct the property in the seceded States, at least one-third$3,125,000,000; - leaving, in the present United States, $6,250,000,000. It will thus be seen, that the present debt of the North was one-fifth of all the property of every kind it possesses; and in one year more it would probably be more than one-third. No people on earth had ever been plunged in so large a debt in so short a time. No government in existence had so large a debt in proportion to the amount of property held by its people. In continuing the narrative of the campaign in Virginia, we shall have to observe the remarkable exasperation with which the North re-entered upon this campaign, and to notice many deeds of blackness which illustrated the temper in which she determined to prosecute the desperate fortunes of the war. The military authorities of the North seemed to suppose that better success would attend a savage war, in which no quarter was to be given and no age or sex spared, than had hitherto been secured to such hostilities as are alone recognized to be lawful by civilized men in modern times. It is not necessary to comment at length upon this fallacy. Brutality in war was mistaken for vigor. War is not emasculated by the observances of civilization; its vigor and success consist in the resources of generalship, the courage of troops, the moral ardors of its cause. To attempt to make up for deficiency in these great and noble elements of strength by mere brutal severities—such as pillage, assassination, &c.-is absurd; it reduces the idea of war to the standard of the brigand; t ffends the moral sentiment of the world, and it excites its nemy to the last stretch of determined and desperate exertion There had long been a party in the North who mistook brutality in war for vigor, and clamored for a policy which was to increase the horrors of hostilities by arming the slaves, and making the invaded country of the South the prey of white brigands and "loyal" negroes. This party was now in the ascendency. It had already obtained important concessions. from the Washington government. Nine-tenths of the legislation of the Yankee Congress had been occupied in some form or other with the question of slavery. Universal emancipation in the South, and the utter overthrow of all property, was now the declared policy of the desperate and demented leaders of the war. The Confiscation Bill, enacted at the close of the session of Congress, confiscated all the slaves belonging to those who were loyal to the South, constituting nine-tenths at least of the slaves in the Confederate States. In the Border States occupied by the North, slavery was plainly doomed under a plan of emancipation proposed by Mr. Lincoln with the flimsy and ridiculous pretence of compensation to slaveholders.* These concessions to the radical party in the North excited new demands. The rule which was urged upon the government, and which the government hastened to accept, was to At the proposed rate of valuation, these would amount to...... $358,833,600 Add for deportation and colonization $100 each..... And we have the enormous sum of 119,244,533 $478,078,133 It is scarcely to be supposed that a proposition could be made in good faith, or that in any event the proposition could be otherwise than worthless, to add this vast amount to the public debt of the North at a moment when the treasury was reeling under the enormous expenditures of the war. spare no means, however brutal, to contest the fortunes of the war, and to adopt every invention of torture for its enemy. The slaves were to be armed and carried in battalions against their masters. The invaded country of the South was to be pillaged, wasted, and burnt; the Northern troops, like hungry locusts, were to destroy every thing green; the people in the invaded districts were to be laid under contributions, compelled to do the work of slaves, kept in constant terror of their lives, and fire, famine, and slaughter were to be the portion of the conquered. Before the eyes of Europe the mask of civilization had been taken from the Yankee war; it degenerated into unbridled butchery and robbery. But the nations of Europe, which boasted themselves as humane and civilized, had yet no interference to offer in a war which shocked the senses and appealed to the common offices of humanity. It is to be observed, that during the entire continuance of the war up to this time, the British government had acted with reference to it in a spirit of selfish and inhuman calculation; and there is, indeed, but little doubt that an early recognition of the Confederacy by France was thwarted by the interference of that cold and sinister government, that ever pursues its ends by indirection, and perfects its hypocrisy under the specious cloak of extreme conscientiousness. No greater delusion could have possessed the people of the South than that the government of England was friendly to them. That government, which prided itself on its cold and ingenious selfishness, seemed to have discovered a much larger source of profit in the continuation of the American war than it could possibly derive from a pacification of the contest. It was willing to see its operatives starving aud to endure the distress of a "cotton famine," that it might have the ultimate satisfaction, which it anticipated, of seeing both parties in the American war brought to the point of exhaustion, and its own greatness enlarged on the ruins of a hated commercial rival. The calculation was far-reaching; it was characteristic of a government that secretly laughed at all sentiment, made an exact science of selfishness, and scorned the weakness that would sacrifice for any present good the larger fruits of the future. This malevolent and venomous spirit of anti-slavery in the war pervaded the whole of Northern society. It was not only the utterance of such mobs as, in New York city, adopted as their war-cry against the South, "kill all the inhabitants; it found expression in the political measures, military orders. and laws of the government; it invaded polite society, and was taught not only as an element of patriotism, but as a virtue of religion. The characteristic religion of New England, composed of about equal quantities of blasphemy and balderdash, went hand in hand with the war. Some of these pious demonstrations were curious, and bring to remembrance the fanaticism and rhapsodies of the old Puritans.* The Yankee army chaplains in Virginia alternately disgusted and amused the country with the ferocious rant with which they sought to inspire the crusade against the South. One of these pious missionaries in Winchester, after the regular Sunday service, announced to the assembled Yankee troops an imaginary victory in front of Richmond, and then called for "three cheers and a tiger, and Yankee Doodle." In a sermon preached near the enemy's camp of occupation, the chaplain proclaimed the mission of freeing the negroes. He told them they were free, and that, as the property amassed by their masters was the fruit of the labors of the blacks, these had the best title to it * No one affected the peculiarity of the Puritans more than Gov. Andrews, of Massachusetts. The following pious rant is quoted from one of his speeches at Worcester; in blasphemy and bombast it equals any of the fulminations of the "Pilgrim Fathers'' "I know that the angel of the Lord, one foot on the earth and one on the sea, will proclaim in unanswerable language, that four millions of bondmen shall ere long be slaves no longer. We live in a war, not a riot; as we thought last year, with a half million in the field against an atrocious and rebellious foe. Our government now recognizes it as a war, and the President of the United States, fulminating his war-orders, has blown a blast before which the enemy must fly. Rebellion must fall, and they who have stood upon the necks of sc many bondsmen shall be swept away, and four million souls rise to immortality. "Ah, foul tyrants! do you hear him where he comes? "Men may die and moulder in the dust- and should help themselves. At another place, near the scene of the execution of John Brown for violation of law, sedition, and murder, a sermon was preached by an army chaplain on ome text enjoining "the mission of proclaiming liberty;" and the hymn given out and sung was— "John Brown's body hangs dangling in the air, Sing glory, glory, hallelujah!" These, however, were but indications displayed of a spirit in the North, which, with reference to the practical conduct of the war, were serious enough. By a general order of the Washington government, the military commanders of that government, within the States of Virginia, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, and Arkansas, were directed to seize and use any property, real or personal, belonging to the inhabitants of this Confederacy which might be necessary or convenient for their several commands, and no provision was made for any compensation to the owners of private property thus seized and appropriated by the military commanders of the enemy. But it was reserved for the enemy's army in Northern Virginia to exceed all that had hitherto been known of the savage cruelty of the Yankees, and to convert the hostilities hitherto waged against armed forces into a campaign of robbery and murder against unarmed citizens and peaceful tillers of the soil. On the 23d of July, 1862, Gen. Pope, commanding the forces of the enemy in Northern Virginia, published an order requiring that "all commanders of any army corps, divisions, brigades, and detached commands, will proceed immediately to arrest all disloyal male citizens within their lines, or within their reach, in rear of their respective commands. Such as are willing to take the oath of allegiance to the United States, and will furnish sufficient security for its observance, shall be permitted to remain at their homes and pursue in good faith their accustomed avocations. Those who refuse shall be conducted South, beyond the extreme pickets of this army, and be notified that, if found again anywhere within our lines, or at any point in rear, they shall be considered spies and subjected |