. They are rather groves. In
the Caucasus the Russians continually attack great and dense forests;
they fire in them several round shots, then grape, and then storm them
with the bayonet; and the Circassians are no worse soldiers than are
the Southrons.

European papers talk much of mediation, of a peaceful arrangement, of
compromise. By intuition of the future the Northern people know very
well the utter impossibility of such an arrangement. A peace could not
stand; any such peace will establish the military superiority of the
arrogant, reckless, piratical South. The South would teem with
hundreds of thousands of men ready for any piratical, fillibustering
raid, enterprise, or excursion, of which the free States north and
west would become the principal theatres. Such a marauding community
as the South would become, in case of success, will be unexampled in
history. The Cylician pirates, the Barbary robbers, nay, the Tartars
of the 12th, 13th, and 14th centuries, were virtuous and civilized in
comparison with what would be an independent, man-stealing, and
man-whipping Southern agglomeration of lawless men. The free States
could have no security, even if _all_ the thus _called_ gentlemen and
men of honor were to sign a treaty or a compromise. The Southern
pestilential influence would poison not only the North, but this whole
hemisphere. The history of the past has nothing to be compared with
organized, legal piracy, as would become the thus-called Southern
chivalry on land and on sea; and soon European maritime powers would
be obliged to make costly expeditions for the sake of extirpating,
crushing, uprooting the nest of pirates, which then will embrace about
twelve millions,--_every_ Southern gentleman being a pirate at heart.

This is what the Northern people know by experience and by intuition,
and what makes the people so uneasy about the inertia of the
administration.

Mr. Lincoln, Mr. Seward, Gen. Scott, and other great men, are soured
against the people and public opinion for distrusting, or rather for
criticising their little display of statesmanlike activity. How
unjust! As a general rule, of all human sentiments, confidence is the
most scrutinizing one. If _confidence_ is bestowed, it wants to
perfectly know the _why_. But from the outset of this war the American
people gave and give to everybody full, unsuspecting confidence,
without asking the why, without even scrutinizing the actions which
were to jus