trust that this people is
virtuous and brave enough not to give up a just and necessary contest
before its end is attained, or shown to be unattainable for want of
material agencies. What was the end to be attained by accepting the gage
of battle? It was to get the better of our assailants, and, having done
so, to take exactly those steps which we should then consider necessary
to our present and future safety. The more obstinate the resistance, the
more completely must it be subdued. It may not even have been desirable,
as Mr. Mill suggested long since, that the victory over the rebellion
should have been easily and speedily won, and so have failed to develop
the true meaning of the conflict, to bring out the full strength of the
revolted section, and to exhaust the means which would have served it
for a still more desperate future effort. We cannot complain that
our task has proved too easy. We give our Southern army,--for we must
remember that it is our army, after all, only in a state of mutiny,--we
give our Southern army credit for excellent spirit and perseverance in
the face of many disadvantages. But we have a few plain facts which show
the probable course of events; the gradual but sure operation of the
blockade; the steady pushing back of the boundary of rebellion, in spite
of resistance at many points, or even of such aggressive inroads as that
which our armies are now meeting with their long lines of bayonets,--may
God grant them victory!--the progress of our arms down the Mississippi;
the relative value of gold and currency at Richmond and Washington. If
the index-hands of force and credit continue to move in the ratio of the
past two years, where will the Confederacy be in twice or thrice that
time?

Either all our statements of the relative numbers, power, and wealth of
the two sections of the country signify nothing, or the resources of our
opponents in men and means must be much nearer exhaustion than our own.
The running sand of the hour-glass gives no warning, but runs as freely
as ever when its last grains are about to fall. The merchant wears as
bold a face the day before he is proclaimed a bankrupt, as he wore at
the height of his fortunes. If Colonel Grierson found the Confederacy "a
mere shell," so far as his equestrian excursion carried him, how can we
say how soon the shell will collapse? It seems impossible that our own
dissensions can produce anything more than local disturbances, like the
M