Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1862-02-28
A Growl at the eAdministr ion-War Of Ex.
termination Advised Union Men In the

termination Advised Union Men I'm the
South.
rt'rom the Richmond Examiner, Feb al
The Government of the Southern confsdef.
acy, elected by the people, under the organic
law Of the land, commences its existence on q
national holiday-to-morrow The day is aus.
picious. The President and Vice President
have received the greatest token Of public
faith and obedience ever given to the elective
chiefs of any nation; they have been chosen by
an unanimous vote. Few governments have
begun to act in an hour of deeper gloom or
greater peril. But there was once another
envirOned with yet greater dangers, enveloped
with enemies yet moro formidable, with less
sympathy abroad, surrounded by more traitors
at homo: 1t was that of France, when the
powers of the nation were placed in the hands
of Committee of Public Safety.
Yet it scattered like heaps of chaff in tenn
pest the armies that we're marching over the
frontiers from every quarter of the compass;
it made the domestic conspirators, which 1t
found jubilant at the distress Of the nation,
burrow into the earth with terror; taught Eu-
rope to shake and sicken at the very name of
France, and set her armies marching on the
high road to every capital on the continent.
But the committee of public safety did not
stand on dignity, humanity and the rules of
civilized warfare when it commenced its mem
orable operations. 1t did not employ military
Turveydrops to command its troops; nor did 1t
fill its bureaus with disguised royalists, emil
grant Englishmen, or lovers Of nice Offices.
1t was earnest and grim as its own guillotine;
it struck for life and death, for victory and
self-preservation, at any cost Of blood and
pain and horror. 1t summoned to its side the
men that were like herselc-of powerful intel
ligence, and fierce observation-disclosures who
had no quarter to give or take, and who cared
for nothing but quick success in that desperate
business. Their character rapidly pervaded
every officer. They awoke the nation with
an awful cry. Every other thing was given
over and given up to the battle, and defeat
was rendered so much worse than death to
generals and soldiers, that no mortal courage
was firm enough to meet it.
Ii this country is to escape the miseries of q
protracted war, which may render the Confed-
eracy hell on earth for the next ten years,
the Government which is to be inaugurated to-
morrow must adopt the same energetic system.
The keynote to this affair was we'll and truly
given by Jackson, of Alexandria. Had his
ever-memOrable example been properly appre-
ciated, the Southern Confederacy would be
safe at this time. This war should have been
rendered war Of determination from the first.
Some counties, in that case, would have been
terribly harried and distressed by the enemy;
but we should have long since obtained all the
terms we wanted, or the whole energy and
force of the nation would now be up organized,
and wrestling with irresistible power
1t is not yet too late to change the vain and
genteel, but fatal system that has prevailed till
the enemy has lost all fear of US; till we have
become the open scof of the traitorous tories
that fill our streets, our fields, the very depart
ments of the government itself, who invite the
tyrant to our rivers and our coasts, spelling
for the halter and the bullet, while hell yauns
and gapes to receive them.