Weekly national intelligencer. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1841-1869, 1864-09-01
THE ELEMENTS OF THE CONTEST.


The thoughtful reader has been able to infer,
from the tenor of the observations we offered on
Saturday last with respect to the origin and causes
Oh the present deplorable war, that its outbreak,
however precipitated by violence on one side or by
menaees on the other was sooner or later inevi
table, We know il is common to say that the war
might have been avoided if the leaders Of the
party which acceded to the control of the Govern
ment under President Lincoln had shown a pro-
per spirit of concession, which is much the same
as to say that the war might have been avoided
If the leaders Of that party had been angels and
not men. In considering the historic probabilities
of the question, we are bound to estimate the
forces which impeled each of the oontending sec
tions in given line Of direction until they both
insensibly drifted into a war, without knowing
at all the strength of the motives under which they
were acting The intensity aud volume of the po-
itical and moral forces coldng in this great
shock have been revealed to ourselves only by the
magnitude OF the conclusion which has shaken
society to its lowest base
We are quite well aware that no comprehensive
view of this kind can relieve from the just weight
of the responsibility which they incurred the men
who, on the one side or the other, sought rather
to invite than to avert this catastrophe. There is
q "needs be" that offences come, but woe to the
man by whom the offences come. The philosophi-
cal historian, however, who shall anayze in their
Ultimate cause, and impellng motives the events
that are now passing before our eyes will be able
to perceive in them the result of deep-rooted and
widespread antipathies, involving whole classes of
men, rather than the offspring Of personal mschi-
nations and individual ambition have not indeed
been wanting on the one side or the other of the
dividing line, but the far-impending issue has
shown itself to be stronger than all these by the
gigantic sweep it has taken beyond the scope
which entered into the schemes and calculations
Of the men who supposed they were controlling its
movements, but who have lived only to see them
selves made the sport of the forces they had evoked
He who of old would rend the oak
Dream'd not of the rebound"
And SO they who undertook to rend this Union
were little aware of the wrathful forces which they
would unchsin by that rash act. But these forces
now make their presence every where felt, and
they show themselves to be stronger than the men
whom they impel, for they every where drive men
headong according to the gusts of passion rather
than the persuasions of reason.
We have cause to believe that the memorable
"logic of events has taught some useful but
bitter lessons to antslavery zealots at the North
and to that class at the South who for years
had been the pIopagandists of disunion. Golden
dreams have been dispelled. The spirit of pride
and predominanoe which long ruled in the hearts
Of many Southern politicians, causing them to
augur not only the easy maintenance Of Southern
Independence, but the easy conquest of the " un-
military North" has been cast out. In the outset
of the war the Federal Government was assailed
not only in the property Of the nation lying within
the Seeded States, but its security in the National
Capital was menaced and it is safe to say that it
would have been expelled from this capital by
armed violence if it had not placed itself in an at
titude of resistance. The forces which Joined us
in this gigantic struggle were destined to impinge
at some point. and when they came into collision
in the year 1861 they speedily served to show by
their violence that they were not of nature to be
harmlessly averted or speedily allayed.