Port Tobacco times, and Charles County advertiser. (Port Tobacco, Md.) 1845-1898, 1858-12-23


the way of others, forbear saying more upon tn,
, subject at present.
ssSons of St. Marys, arise!
The glorious hours gone FORTH
And worthy of such ties,
Display who gave ye birth!'
For the Port Tobacco Times
MIR. EDITOR The article in the St. Mary's
Beacon of the 18th inst, over the signature oil
Senex, has just been handed me. could hardly
have been made to believe, by any process oil
reasoning or by any assurance, however posi-
tive, that the little article which appeared in
your paper in the nature of challenge for a trial
of skill at pigeon shooting, would have produced
on the part of our beloved mother St. Marys a
history of the Mexican war. Indeed it is not
only history Of that war, but clear and
comprehensive dsquisition on the science of
war itself, or rather of its utility, indeed, neces-
sty. The brief challenge which was pub
lished in your paper was in imperfect con-
formity with the mode of declaring war in
the days of chivalry when the herald adj
vanced to the confines of his own territories
and hurled a defiant challenge at any one who
might be rash enough to accept it. 1t was an act
to test the purity and extent of the chivalrous
spirit of our benevolent mother-of that chival-
rous spirit which once characterized our anccs-
try-and which by its quickening and renovat-
ing influences ushered into being the bright and
humane civilization of the nineteenth century,
But, am happy to find, this spirit lives in the
mother and she is disposed to reciprocate it in
the daughter.
We cordially approve of the views of our
venerable friend in reference to the propriety
and indeed necessity of an individual prepara-
ton for war. It is far better thus to be pre-
pared than by the force Of a military discipline
upheld and enforced by general and strong
military organization the latter might endanger
our liberties while the former might be peaceful
yet effective. But it is not only as a prepara-
ton and readiness for a war Of defence that we
are to learn to point the gun with unerring aim
and pull the trigger; but ours is higher and
much more exalted destiny-the conquest by
peaceful means, we could hope, of the world or
by force if we meet. Our destiny is universal
dominion-the universal dominion of freedom,
purity, patriotism and general and popular learn
i ing over despotism, impurity, treason and gen.
eral ignorance We have our peculiar genius
as people to establish perfect and maintain
and indeed to place permanently this genius in
the ascendent. To accomplish this great pur-
pose we must be prepared not only to shoot with
unerring aim and exert under circumstances, it
may be the most adverse, the utmost bravery
but in the conflict, for final ascendency, we shall
have to fight great, last, a decisive battle
a battle which will stamp the nations of the
earth with our own peculiar genius or give back
again human destiny to the triumph of that
despotism which the universal rebellion of crea-
ture against Creator has maintained so long and
so fatally. We are then happy to find that our
venerable friend so fully, as the representative
Of our more venerable mother, appreciates the
spirit in which this challenge for trial of skill
has been gwen. A great and decisive battle
has to be fought and successfully fought for the
freedom of the world or despotism must again
settle back in its ancient place and ancient
strength. At different periods of the worlds pro-
gress decisive battles, under the direction of Di-
vine Providence, have been fought, by which the
ascendency has been given to the genius of a
race, and now it is our destiny to win the deci-
sive battle which is to give the genius of free
principles the ascendency over that race
We well know that our venerable friend is
we'll acquainted with the history of the various
decisive battles by which the human race has
been led to its present high state of civilization
| by which the entire current of human progress
was changed. The first great battle, in the
achievement of this great result, was between
the brave, the free, the disciplined and generous
Greeks and the cowardly, slavish, the dsorderly
and unmanly Persians on the plains of immor-
tai Marathon. This glorious battle, for human
freedom and human gifts, first rolled back the
tide of despotism and proclaimed free principles
for our race and the nations of the EARTH Fierce
bloody and ceaseless have been the conflicts be-
tween freedom and despotism from that day to
| the present. The freedom which was then won
| is now in our exclusive keeping and it is for us
to give it to the world or ingloriously to aban-
don it.
ssQuibus actus uteruue
Europe atque Asie fats concurrent orbis.''
After this followed the siege of Syracuse, in
which these same Greeks-so renowned on the
first great battlefield for freedom-attempted
the conquest of another people that they might
give their name and nature to the world but it
pleased that unseen Providence, which 'shapes
all our destinies rough hew them as we may"
| to defeat them in this attempt and give to an
other people the prerogative of stamping upon
the broad forehead Of our race, and indeed upon
the nations of the earth, their genius. Then
| follows Arbela of which space will not allow
me to speak as we could wish; and now comes
the battle, the great, the decisive battle of the
Metaurus, so important and extended in its re-
suits, and which has given to us, the white race,
the conquest of the world. Few occurrences in
the progress of man in his career of civilization
presents spectacle more sublime and momen-
tous than the scene of this battlefield, upon the
result of which hung such momentous conse-
quences for the destiny Of man, both here and
hereafter. For more than half a century two
races, the white and the swarthy, had been con-
tending with memorable hate for the extermina-
ton or unqualified subjugation of the other. If
such language be not out of place here, I might
say it was an hour when there might Justly have
reigned silence in Heaven, and spectacle at
the sight of which angels might we'll have yelled
their faces. There is providence of God and
that event, in obedience to His Decree prepared
the way for the coming of a Saviour and the
universal extension and establishment Of our
triumphant religion.