Ashtabula weekly telegraph. [volume] (Ashtabula, Ohio) 1853-1873, 1862-05-24

| lHOhSnnu elective SOluleFS IN arms tO-0ay.
But it has lost all hold upon Kentucky,
Missouri, and Maryland it hos lost at
least halt Of Virginia and Tennessee respec-
lively and it has received a staggering
blow in the destruction of its feet and the
capture Of its forts on the Lower Missssip.
pi, resulting in the surrender of its chief
commercial emporium, New Orleans, to the
Federal arms--a loss which virtually isolates
Texas, aud renders its uuexhausted stores
Of corn and cattle Of little further use to the
Confederate cause and it has lost prestige
if not actual strength by the successive
Withdrawals of its forces from Manassas,
from yorktown, and from Williamsburg,
followed by the triumphant columns of Nc.
Clellan. It's soldiers are generally 10 rags,
while the means Of reclothiDg them are not
within its reach its arms are deficient and
inferior, and it is not likely to be able to
replace them. Worst of all its promises
TO pay are nearly as uncurrent as they are
inlrinsically worthless, while its supply of
food is clearly inadequate to its urgent needs.
An army, composed in good part of i'm.
pressed Europeans or NOrtherners by birth
cannot retreat under such aspices without
being profoundly demcralized and it is
!
Hundred Thousand still ranged under the
standards of Jefferson Davis would gladly
leave them tomorrow if they safely could.
Such armies, with such resources, cannot
sustain protracted contest against such
well appointed legions as our generals are
now leading to battle. A few days, not
impossibly, may see the total collapse of
what remains of the Confederacy, with the
fight or Disappearance of its chiefs few
weeks OF the furlherest, should witness
the old flag floating in triumph over Rich.
mond, Knoxville, Raleigh Charleston, Mo-
bile, and jackson, and the Rebellion ap-
parentIy suppressed.
But when its armies shall have been dis.
persed, it spirit is likely to remain. The
demoniac hate which treacherously assailed
and slaughtered the unarmed volunteers of
Massachusetts in the streets of Baltimore,
which has bayOneed our wounded on many
a battlefield, aud which dug MP our dead
heroes from the graves of Manassas to
tear out their skulls for drinking cups and
soap. dishes, and their jaw bones for spurs,
still glares from the eyes and is uttered
through the Kisses of Rebel women in
Nashville, New Orleans, and every slave.
holding cry occupied by our troops. The
men who remain scowl silently but the
women finding that impunily IN their dress
which their department does MT justify,
everywhere parade their implacable hostili.
ty 10 the National cause and all who susl ain
il. The life of q Union soldier who strag-
giles from or falls behind his comrades in
any rebel region is not worth days pur-
chase, if three or four rebels, no matter how
, peaceful their garb and usual occupation
can pounce upon him undetected the reb
ell riots in New Orleans, whereby the nation
al flag was torn Ldown and trampled under
foot after the City had confessed itself at
the mercy of our arms the burning of
merchant vessels, of cotton. of all manner
of private property which is supposed de.
irable to the loyal States, ell show that
the Rebellion lives in the hearts of the
saveholding caste and its satellites, and re.
fuses to be exercised by any amount Of kind.
ness aud expostulation. The very furbear.
ance generally evinced by our soldiers
iuaame the malignty of the rebels they
feel that these eviRce a higher civilization
than their own, and they are obliged TO rep.
resent and try TO regard them as proofs of
our conscious weakness and apprehension.
and thus TO inalme their own courage by
treating our triumps as fortuitons and soon
to be effaced by defeats. Assassination,
poison, yellow fever, such are the agencies
which they invoke for destruction of the
Union armies, and by whose aid they hope
to retrieve their recent disasters.
For they know if we do not, that it is
Slavery which has grappled in deadly strug
gle with the Union and that one of the two
must perish. VarniSh over the matter as
we may they feel that ''the peculiar insti-
tuition" bombarded Fort Sumter, seized the
Norfolk and Pensacola Navy Yards, with
the various armOrieS, arsenals, mintS, and
Sub-treasuries wrested by force from the
Union, aud turned over as spoils to the
C0nfederacy that it was Slavery that tri-
umphed at Manassas, and now reels under
its discomflures at Pea Ridge Fort Donel.
son, aud New O. leans And, Just so long
as Slavery lives and reigns in the hearts of
the ruling caste ia any State, so long will
that State be agitated by secret conspira-
cies if not couvused by open war 10 divide
aud destroy the American Republic, unless
that end should meantime be attained aud
the Union irrevocaby disrupted.
This fact the selfstyled Conservatives of
the loyal States will not comprehend
hence their disquisitiOns on "the UniOn as
it was" are utterly wide of the mark A
restoration of the hollow accord between
Liberty aud Slavery which existed, or seem
ed to exist 30 years since, may be ever
so desirable, but it is clearly impossible.
The Right of Secession-that is the right
of the dominant party in any state to break
up the Nation at pleasure-s henceforlh a
canon of the Slave Power, and will never
be practically repudiated. though it may be
formally disavowed. Make compromise
tomorrow whereby slavery shall be renStat'
ed in the power it formerly possessed, its
Masons and Slidells replaced 10 the Senate,
its Floyds and Davises in the Cabinet, and
its subserVient Buchanans and Pierces in
the White House, aud it will dy afresh to
arms on the first indication that the seepter
is passing from lis own to an unllneal hand.
1t will regard the right to do so as conse-