ar to cover our shortcomings in
diplomacy. How narrowly we escaped demoralizing ourselves, at the last
moment before Congress adjourned, by some concession which would have
destroyed our consistency without strengthening our position! If we
could even now bind our generals to imitate our Cabinet in its admirable
and novel policy of silence,--to eschew pen and ink as carefully as if
they were in training for the Presidency! The country is safe so long as
they shut their mouths and open their batteries.

The ordeal by battle is a stern test of the solid power of a nation.
There must always be some great quality to produce great military
superiority,--skill, or daring, or endurance, or numbers, or wealth,
or all together. Except the first two, neither of these special
qualifications has been even claimed by the Secessionists; and these two
have been taken for granted with such superfluous boastfulness as to
yield strong internal evidence against the claim. Certainly their
general strategy, up to this moment, has yielded not a single evidence
of far-sighted judgment or conscious power, while it has shown decided
glimpses of weakness and indecision. Indeed, how can an army like theirs
be strong? Its members mostly unaccustomed to steady exertion or precise
organization; without mechanic skill or invention; without cash or
credit; fettered in their movements by the limited rolling stock of
their scanty railways; tethered to their own homes by the fear of
insurrection;--what element of solid strength have they, to set against
these things? In the present state of the world, strong in peace is
strong in war. In modern times an army of heroes is useless without
facilities for arming, transporting, and feeding it, to say nothing of
the more ignoble circumstance of pay. Considerations of simple political
economy render it almost impossible for a slaveholding army to be strong
collectively, nor do the habits of Southern life usually fit its members
to be strong singly.

In remembering the Battle of New Orleans, we forget that the Southwest
was then a region of hardy pioneers, such as are now rather to be sought
for in Kansas and California. The famous Tennessee riflemen of that day
were not necessarily slaveholders, and their legitimate descendants are
yet to be found among the brave men who rally round the nearest approach
to Andrew Jackson whom the State now boasts,--a tolerable fac-simile
both as to character and etymology,--An