Semi-weekly standard. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1853-18??, 1863-05-12
ALTERNATIVE.

Southern arms have achieved another great vic
tory and we are no nearer to peace than we we're
month ago. Gen. Hooker will go the way of Nc
CleEan Pope and Burnside-certain thousands
soldiers on each side have gone the way of all flesh
and what then2 Our enemies can afford to sustain
defeats of this kind, and 1e still making progress
towards the ultimate subjugation Of the Conedera-
ev, because the is still waged upon our soil,
not upon theirs. By all their disasters they lose
literally nothing at ALL the lives OF some mer-
cenaries whom they can well spare Indeed, the
business of their eountry-that is tosay, the indus
try of the contractors and the production and sale
Of all sorts of commissary and quartermaseT stores,
all this trade is even stimulated and improved oy
an occasional battle. great victory, to be sure,
would be still better for them than great defeat;
but in either case there is vast destruction of stores
arms, equipments, clothing; and the traffic of the
contractors becomes more brisk. Our enemies do
not feel the war as they make feel it seeing that
it is not brought home to their doors; their towns
are not subjected, as so many OF ours are, to the
tyranny of hostile garrison and provost. marshal
Their women ARE not chased from their homes,
their lids are not laid waste and condemned to
steriIity by the destruction of plows the robbery
Ct pillow horses the burning of mills, fences and
tiInbar; their children are not dragged before an
enemys military court on charge of wearing Union
colorS; their railroads and bridges not cut and
blown up; their ports are not subject 20 con-
tinuai blockade and occasional bombardment; their
citizens are not forced to take oath of fidelity to
the Confederate government; they are not forced,
as We are to purchase their clothing from Confed-
crate merchants, at three or four times the just
price; in short, they suffering nothing but dis
grace military and moral dishonor; and they are
very willing to take that and hold themselves well
paid for it so long as they know that in the midst
Of all this, aud in spite of all this, they are still
creeping forward, Creeping Is the word,O acre by
acre, mile by mile, over our country, infcting all
the material evils of war. Our forces, wherever
they meet the enemy fairly, drive him back with
less and shame yet on the whole, they are suffer-
ing nothing, and we suffering the whole. If the
war is to continue a few years longer, upon this
principle we shall have "lOst all but honor'-and
they shall have gained all with the same exception
Our people are too much disposed, after every
Confederate victory, to say to themselves, surely
this is to be the last of it; the Yankees must tire
Of this fruitlesS work in the long run; when they
find it vain to try to conquer the Southern forces
then the "peace party" at the North will grow
Strong &c, &c. Any time since the first Manassas
rout We have been hattering ourselves after this
same manner. Since then they have taken cheer
fully the carnage of the Peninsula and the second
disaster of Manassas and the shameful repuses be-
fore Vicksburg and Charleston, and the fierce and
bloody vengeance of fredericksburg and the saugh-
ter great and grim" at Murfreesboro. And there
is not only relaxation in the urgency and extent
and force of the military effort to crush US, but
constant systematic increase both in its strength
and in its ferocity. The those towards suffer
at the hands of our men. the more they make our
women and children suffer at their hands. Leo
thrashcS them Soundly on the Rappahannock i'm
nedalely several deenceltss towns in Tennessee or
Mississippi are given over to a ruftian soldery-
Beauregard drives them bowling from the ramnarts
of Charleston Immediately the screw of their ras-
cal provost marshals is frightened at Memphis and
Nashville, and helpless families sent fleeing to
rhe South. The'men of Mississippi trample them
III the mud before Vicksburg; very well, they can
take their revenge upon the women of Mississippi
throu % a score of unprotected villages.
Ia all this the damage falls exclusively upon our
people: the profit is all for them their families are
undistuTbed in their peaceful homes their factories
and stores, their looms and workshops are full and
busy; their husbandmen till the ground in peace,
with none to make them afraid; and while they
shut out from US the commerce of all the rest Of the
world, they absolutely monopollze our foreign trade
fhen comes the question, how soon will they tire
Of this WARP When will they think it time to make
Peacer And the answer must be, aerer. Never
while our country is the sole theatre of the strug
gle; never, so long as we permit Confederate wo-
men and children to be tortured and bullied and
beggared by rascal merceRaries, while we neither
make our enemies feel at home what war is, nor re-
iaiate upon their people who are made prisoners
the outEages done upon our helpless non. comba
t4nts; never, while We buy and use everything that
the Yankee makes for US, and sends to us through
= pretended blockade, at pretended risk, at his
Inhu PEtCSeJ never, Whlle Lney. can remain on the
offensive all round Doth by land and sea- and choose
their own time and place for attack-neuer.
Yet no war can last literally for ever Something
or Other will assuredly bring it to an end at last:
rrther foreign intervention, after we have been so
weakened that Engla2d and France can dictate their
sn terms for the peace they will sell u.s. or else
our very WEAKNESS and exhaustion. We NAV tire
Of winning victories upon the present system then
will never tire of sustaining such defeats On the
present plan the struggle uay last or ~enty years
Yet we do not, up to the present tine. complain
Of the conduct of the war by our agthorities and
enerals. We have net only the best troops. but
he best leaders that the continent hes yet produced
All the glory is ours the glory of every kind both
q heroic achievement and in patient endurance and
orbearance. Our record will be trgly noble ono.
@e have proved, more than sufficiently, that we
ave sought to do no hurt to our enemies, but only
o defend our own cherished rights end protect our
Wn homes; even the few moderate and measured =
xamples in the way Of retaliation adopted by US,
ave been slowly, reluctantly forced upon our chiv-
lrous President by the obvious necessity of guard
1g our people from unInanly outrage by the only
1huence which can act upon so base an enemy
Amety, fear: The Confederate government and ,.
e0Pie nave borne and forborne much and long, ia y