Worcester daily spy. [volume] (Worcester [Mass.]) 1850-1888, 1862-07-24
THURSDAY. JULY "a, 1862.


uldUN weeks every lONI SIu Nlllts5G llOll liz
St. Lawrence to the Mississippi rung with
responses to the morning reveille calling
their sons to action and to battle. Vast ar
mics were raised, organized and placed in the
field before the leaves began to fall. Full of
the freshness of youthful vigor, and inspired
with indignant zeal against the authors of our
calamities, they only asked to be led into the
presence of the PARTICLES, and were ready
to answer for the result.
One large army was sent down the Missis-
sippi. 1t melted away Instructions as the
sun melts the frost. Fremont's bravely-
opened campaign in Missouri was finished.
The marauders who had attempted to wrest
Kentucky from the Union were driven from
its soil. The blockade of the Mississippi
faded away before the progress of the fleet on
the river, and the undisciplined arms of the
army of the west. One after another of the
rebel Notifications gave way, till the old flag
was carried star into the bowels of the land"
Other detachments were sent along the sea-
board to perfect the blockade, or reopen the
ports. For several months they kept the
country in good heart. Scarcely reverse or
disaster befel them worthy of the name. Good
fortune on the coast of the Carolinas, good
fortune in the gulf, good fortune wherever the
army and navy united their forces, frightened
the expectations of the country, till it seemed
as if the end was approaching, and the king
was about to return to his own again.
The grand army in the meantime was con-
centrating on the banks of the Potomac. 1t
grew under the eye of the commanding gen.
eral strong in numbers, in discipline, and in
hopeful courage. Patient, diligent, devoted,
it awaited the hour when in the fulness of
events it would be permitted to march against
the common enemy in his last stronghold, and
end his guilty pretensions with a blow. The
story of that campaign is nearly told. Weeks
Of anxious expectation heightened into
months. The ripening autumn came; the
promised fruits of the summer turned to
ashes. Mid-winter came; the frail tents of
our northern army still whitened the banks of
the Potomac. Spring-the Potomac ''base"
was abandoned and the peninsular campaign
begun. Midsummer-that noble and heroic
army at bay on the banks OF James river;
under the shelter of the gunboats; reduced
but not dismayed; repulsed but not disheart-
ened; waiting to be strengthened.
One year gone. The people are not de-
spondent Their courage is not broken.
Their patriotism is not abated. The sea on
which tboir boJ
than they thought; but it is not wrecked.
Disappointed by events, feeling sometimes
that they have not received an adequate re-
turn for all they have sacrificed, they still
rest with mistaken faith on the government,
giving freely all that it asks, all that it desires
of confidence and support Conscious of
performing every duty of citizens and patri-
ots-painfully conscious of the responsibility
which rests on themselves as well as on the
president and his counsellors, they would do
wrong to their convictions no less than to the
government if they did not speak plainly of
the dangers which lie straight and clear in its
path.
During this year of patient waiting, or of
patient toll, the rebellion has availed itself to
utmost of the advantages of its institutions.
The civilization which tolerates slavery and
the civilization which provokes war are on
the same plane, and strengthen each other.
The one legacy which the secession conspira-
ators left to us was the fatal, fatal Difference
to that institutional poisoned garment
which the nation was forced to wear
long before the conspiracy ripened into
revolt, and which still threatens to be
its shroud. Under what eclipse of rea-
son a people who started in the world
to illustrate the beauty and virtue of
free institutions became so distrastrously
mystifed, it doesn't much matter to know.
There is the fact. Public safety, memorable
state necessity, marches through the land
making toys Of habeas corpus, trial by jury,
freedom of speech, and shifting down all the
safeguards of personal liberty; but the mo-
ment that more than impe rial despot ap-
proaches this institution, or pursues public
enemies who seek protection under it, as
indicators of old sought IMMUNITY in the
shadow of consecratcd affairs, its upIifted
arm falls paralyzed and helpless. Now that
the country itself has been led hoodwinked
and barefoot over the red-hot ploughshares
Of battle, on account of slavery and its Of
fences against order and peace, it has the
right to demand that the spell shall be
broken.
The president has the power in his hands
l., II
but under the obligation that rests on him to
save the republic. If he can not do it for the
sake of justice, if he can not in the interest of
humanity, he can do it in the name of s'the
common defence and the general welfare"
Whichever method or motive he might choose,
nothing more would be wanting to our sue
cess-nothing more to fill the measure of his
own fame. If he chose to leave the country
better than he found it, to add glory to the
triumphs which he expects to achieve
'on the neck of crowned fortune proud.
TO rear q DDS trophies"-
he has only to speak the word. which. while
hglves freedom to race whose title ia he free
was never rightfully forfeited, would in an
hour add a million strong and willing arms to
our struggling cause. There are reasons of
sound statesmanship as well as of duty and
justice for so wise an act. tWhen a nat;o,,,
says Froude, Sis in the throes Of revolut;o,
wild spirits are abroad in the storm. and moor
human nature presses blindly forward with