The Ashland union. [volume] (Ashland, Ashland County, Ohio) 1854-1868, 1863-05-06
War with EugIand.


the East seem not unwilling to infict upon us
a war with England, while We are in the midst
of a war at home. The papers on the other
side OF the water do not seem to be in much
alarm about it, and taking the London Times
as the great organ. of all Europe, it is prepar-
ing for us q good reputation to start with,
should we have either war or peace. The
following is a specimen
From the London Time1 Of April 1st-
An ancient rhetorician wrote about Xerxes
| that he turned dry land into sea, and sea into
dry land, making a canal through Mount Athos,
and building q bridge across the Hellespont.
The American Republic seems to partake
much more of the violence and extravaganza
of the Persian monarch than of the wise coun-
sci and well combined action OF the Fedora
ton of Commonwealths which opposed him.
Excited by a tremendous war, and all the por-
tents of approaching revolution, the inagina-
ton of the American Democracy seems to
have run riot. Not satiated with all the de-
s~truction which modern science has enabled
mankind to wreak upon each other, the North
has called to its aid the mighty agencies of
nature, and seeks to ruin and musaate half a
continent in the vain hope to overthrow or in
timidate its inhabitants. In vain Nature,
after a series of tremendous convuisions, set
Il tied lGTSell QOHu uDO .GOA4Ctu1uk ia OIQCT
and regularity, indenting the coast with bays
and harbours, and draining the vast area of a
continent through the agency of enormous
rivers. The rage of man frcts against these
natural and beniicient ordinances just as
Xerxcs flung letters into the sea and lashed
the winds that wers rebellious to his COM
mands. BY the aid of the 'stone feet" the
United States have blocked up the entrance
to several much frequented h~arbours, and now
81 - I.lx--..I g. -~ookrYvroooe ILL.,
seek to drown the land they ctnnot cor quer.
1t is calculated that, by the actipn of the Fed
erals in cutting the ~levees, or dams, which
keep the Mississippi in its course as it runs
through the level lands towards the sea, q dis
trict as large as Scotland has been drowned
in the State of Mississippi, and 5000 square
miles in the State of Louisiana.
Had some enormous strategisal advantage
been obtainable by this proceeding, mankind
must have deplored the harsh and dreadful
necessity which in . contin, nt SO small a por-
ton of which has yet been reclaimed for the
use of civilized man, drove the Federals to
lay waste and devastate SO considerable a por-
ttion Of its surface. But there il no reason
to suppose that any advantage in the least de-
gree commensurate wishthe amount of wanton
and cruel destruction which has been Ierpe-
tra:ed could anyhow be obtained Most GER
taiinly no such advantages has been gained
The expedition from Yazoo Pass, so far from
reaching its destined point near Vicksburg,
has been encountered and defeated by Con-
federate batteries, and driven to take refuge
in another river to avoid further I'M uries.-
The act, therefore, stands out in all its naked
dcformity. Those who have called the mighty
Mississippi to their aid have proved them
selves unworthy of their potent ally, and pow
erful only for mischief, have beer singularly
discounted in the endeayor to profit by their
new and singular enterprise. We have all
read how the Dutch, the mighty precursors of
of the United States, a people as conspicuous
for doing much with small resources as the
American Union for doing little with great
ones, when they found feducoaIH
the two small States of Holland and Zealand,
with which alone they had to make head a.
eaipst the powerful monarchy of Spain, in the
/ extrcmity of their despair and desolation cut
through the dikes which protected their fields
aud gardens from the ocean which roared
above their heads, choosing rather to give
their native land to destruction than to see it
in the grasp of q tyrant or a prosecutor. This
courage. prepared for everything except sub
mission-this noble fortitude, which the ex-
IRENE of i'll fortune could not subdue-forms
one of the brightest pages of history, and in
vests the sieges of Harlem and of Leyden
with an interest second to nothing in the an
mails of mankind. But in the proportion to
our admiration to those who called in the
waves of the German Ocean to protect their
faith and their freedom must be abhorrence
inspired by acts SO waRton and SO f~erceious as
that of letting loose the waters of: the Missis.
sippi over the plantations of the South, and
overwhelming under the waves that which II
is found impossible to subdue.
At the beginning of the war the North wen,
forth to battle in all the presumption of over
-oar.pr cfrop1fh op1 uuun1,orc Their nations
of success were thoroughly Oriental. They
had the largest number of men under arms
and doubted not of the victory, especially al
they had the largest resources to feed, arm
and recruit them. Received in the field BY
troops far less numerous than their own, they
found to their astonishment how little thu
leaders of the So1th had to dread from then
in the open field. From that time the whole
aspect Of the war has entierly changed. Ii
proportion as success has become more diff
cult the means employed for its attainment
have been more odious and cruel. Every eff
fort has been made to light the torch of ser
vile instruction, and, if this was not dreadfut
enough, water has been called in to supple
ment the tardy vengeance of that fire which
kindled by the hands of slaves, would, if tn,
pious and decorous North could have hal
their will, wrap in one mighty c~onfagratioI
the labor of a hundred years Men may wran
r gle and dispute about the causes, the rights
and the wrongs, of this great quarrel, but al
to these m assures posterity will have but one
verdict to pronounce verdict Of horror ane
execration. And this cruelty and ~fcrocit,
surprising so far all that is recorded in thu
wickedness and barbarity of man in forme
wars has been called into action not for tn
purpose of meeting foreign invasion, but for
war avowedly intended to restore a Fedora
Union which unhappy differences have partial
ly interrupted The men who are thus let
ting loose at the same moment fire and waite
until in an unnatural compact against thcil
adversarics are never tired of repeating tina
they fight for the maintenance of the Union
and look forward with mistaken confidence tt
be restored, and the bretheren SO long en-
| stranned from each niher shnll nnce more