The aegis & intelligencer. [volume] (Bel Air, Md.) 1864-1923, 1864-08-05

| squadron OF two or three hundred bold III
ders Gun with entire impunity, cut rail-
roads betRee Harrisburg aud Baltimore,
and Baltimore and Philadelphia or that
u mere squad of ten men can approach
within four miles of a city containing two
hundred thousand inhabitants, garrisoned
by twenty thousand men. and burn at their
leisure the mansion of the governor of Ma
ryand or that five hundred men should,
by simply sitting down before one Of the
forts of Washington and establishing
weak skirmish line, succeed in placing the
capital Of the nation under siege, cut.
tirg its telegraphic communications with
Baltimore, burning the house of a cabinet
minister within six miles of the city, and
reducing the government to the necessity
of relying on liver and sea nuvigatiuns for
its connections With the great North p
And all this, be it remembered, happens
in the fourth year Of the war, with men
by hundreds of thousands under arms
And now we ask, the whole nation will
ask, ,oho is responsible for such humi2iiu-
tion ? Is it tho President, the Secretary
of War, the chief of staff, or can it he that
our military affairs are still left at such
ends Gas we know them to have been be-
fore) that sometimes one and sometimes
the other Of these functionaries assumes to
exercise the direction of the war, selects
the points of military occupation, and as
signs the officers to their several COM
manas? In the uncertainty resting on this
subject we think there is no doubt about
one thing, and that is, that if the Presi-
dent cannot discover and correct the source
of these blunders, the people in the ap-
preaching election will not be slow to dis
cover one method BY which they can put
an end to this reign of military incompe-
tence in Washington. No respect for the
Presidents "honesty of purpose" and no
admiration for the purity, intelligence,
and administrative skill which they may
recognise in the other executive depart
ments of the government, will stand in the
way of Kidding the War Department of
the incubus which now visibly rests on it
under its present agemeht-making it
shame and reproach to the nation
And in so saying we intend no particular
personal allusion to Mr.. Stanton, for we
do not know to-day that he is responsible
for these things, 1t may be that he confines
himself strictly to the civil details of his
office, and.does not NEEDLE in the matters
which somebody under him or above him
brings to such confusion. But we do
know that somebody is responsible for the
late gross malfeasance, which must ever
stand in our military annals as national
disgrace, so long as posterity shall revert
to the time when FIVE hundred men laid
Washington under siege for two days with
ten or twenty thousand men behind its de-
lenses! Such is the penalty which ma
ton pays for being ruled in any depart
uncut by its ignorance rather than its TO-
telligence.
Nor does the evil end with the disappear
ance of the late fright. Who, after such
an exhibition of military incompetence in
our counsels, can repose any confidence in
the military administration SO long as
it shall remain subject to its pres Mt d.
rectors? What security can any man
feel when the watehnen from the walls
of cur national capital lift up their vol
ces only to expose their own ignorance
Of the nature and extent of the peril from
which they call the people to save them
What governor of what state will be
prompt hereafter to respond to the tap of
the drum in Washington if its alarms are
beaten with most vehemence when there
is tho least known about the necessity for
disturbing the country? An immense
clamor has been raised without cause dur
ing the last few days. Who is sure that
while the conditions of our ignorance re-
main as they are, the next clamor- may
not come with cause, aud find the War De-
partment as little prepared to meet real
danger as it has proved little prepared to =.
face an imaginary one? Let all loyal
people lay these things to heart, but above
all and f st of all, let the President Of the
United States be assured that for these
things his countrymen will hold him to a
strict account and that they will exact full
atonement for the great indignity which
the nation has just suffered in the eyes of
the world.
The President, we know, is ambitious to
earn not only the good opinions Of his fell
ow-citizens, but also to, receive their votes
at the next election. If he would receive
them he must be careful to deserve them;
and if he should in this way vindicate his
claim to the renewed confidence of the
country, we are slre that we could sincere
ly rejoice in his success, not from any in
terest we take in his personal fortunes any
more than in those of any other man or
any other party, but because we desire the
best welfare of the republic in this day,
when she requires the highest statesman
ship and the most exalted capacity to con-
duct to wise conclusion the affairs of the
state. His merits and his pretensious are
now trembling in the balance, held by the
hands of confding and much, nduring
people, who have continued long to hope
against hope under the military misrule of
which they are only too painfully con-
scious, but to the patient endurance of