The Kanzas news., 1857-06-06
Reflections on the Battle of Lexington

O@- VIZ
1T was one of those great days, one of
those elemental occasions in the worlds af-
fairs, when the people rise and act for them
selves. Some organization and preparation
had been made but, from the nature of the
case, with scarce any effect on the events of
that day. 1t may be doubted, whether there
was an efficient order given the whole day to
any body of men as large as regiment. 1t
was the people, In their first capacity, as cit
izens and as freemen, starting from their beds
at midnight, from their fresides, and their
fields, to take their own cause in their own
hands. Such a spectacle is the height of the
moral sublime when the want of every
thing is fully made up by the spirit of the
cause and the soul within stands in place
of discipline, organization, resources. In
theprodigious efforts of a veteran army, be-
meath the dazzling splendor of their array,
there is something revolving to the rejecting
mind. The ranks are filled with the despe-
rate, the mercenary, the depraved an iron
slavery, by the name of subordination, mer-
ges the free will of one hundred thousand
men in the unqualified despotism of one !;
scarce ever desert the individual bosom, are
sounds without a meaning to that fearful,
ravenous, irrational monster of prey, mer-
cenary army. 1t is hard to say who are
most to be commiserated, the wretched peo-
pie on whom it is let loose, or the still more
wretched people whose substance has been
sucked out, to nOurish it into strength and
fury. But in the efforts of the people, of
the people struggling for their rights, mo-
wing not in organized, disciplined masses,
but in their spontaneous action, man for
man, and heart for heart,-though like not
war. nor any of its works,-there is some
thing glorious. They can then move for
ward without orders, act together without
combination, and brave the flaming lines of
battle, without entrenchments to cover, or
walls to shield them. No dissolute camp has
worn off from the feelings of the youthful
soldier the freshness of that home, where
his mother and his sisters sit waiting, with
| fearful eyes and aching hearts, to hear good
news from the wars; no long service In the
ranks of the conqueror has turned the vet
eran's heart into marble; their valor springs
not from recklessness, from habit, from in
difference to the preservation of Efe, knit
by no pledges to the life of others; but in
the strength and spirit of the cause alone they
act, tAcy SOHlSno, tue DlcSS1- III tHAS tilct
conquer. TIE people aisrays conquer
They always must conquer. Armies may
be defeated; kings may be overthrow, and
new dynasties imposed by foreign arms on
an ignorant and slavish race, that care not in
what language the covenant of their subjec-
ton runs, nor in whose name the deed OF
their barter and sale is made out But the
people never invade; and, when they rise
against the invader, are never subdued. II
they are driven from the plains, they fly to
the mountains Steep rocks and everlasting
hills are their castles; the tangled, pathless
| thicket their palisado; and nature,-God,-
is their ally. Now he overwhelms the hosts
of their enemies beneath his drifting noun
| tains of sand; now he buries them beneath
an atmosphere of falling SHOWS; he lets loose
his tempests on their fleets; he puts folly
into their counsels, a madness into the hearts
of their leaders; and he never gave, and new
er viii give, a full and final triumph over a
virsuous, gallant people, resolvedto be free -
I-Edssara Ererett.