"War costs blood, limbs and life. View it in any light we can or regard it as we may, life, limbs and blood are the result of war. The best disciplined troops are often the soonest destroyed, the worst equipped and armed are those which enter the battle field under the most inauspicious circumstances. In duty to the soldier, a state or a nation that is at war, is in honor bound to see taht he is disciplined for the fighting he is expected to do. If he is not so trained, the consequences are certain to be disastrous. If he is not armed equally in all respects with those with whom he is expected to engage, the consequences will cause blood to flow. If the best officers are not detailed to command and lead him into battle, his life is not only in danger from the foe, but it is placed in jeopardy in the false position he may be forced to take by an ignorant commander. The soldier suffers, whoever may be to blame. He it is who takes the runt of consequences. Others may assume the responsibility - but the soldier in the ranks must take the sabre's gash and bullet's hole. We must think of these things as we county the costs of this war. And we must think too, that while we are carping, criminating and recriminating, the blood of our soldiers is at issue in our complaints - human life is at stake while we are discussing human frailties and shortcomings. Never before was an army organized under such difficulties as those which beset and hamper the organization of the army summoned to the field by the President of the United States. Military skill is measured by civilization criticism and thus life, limb and blood are all in danger, while human being are cast into the scale with human judgment, to be disposed of as lightly as we get rid of our articles of barter or production of trade. It seems as if no man knew anything, while all men understood all things. The press talk of battles, sieges, storms and victories as lightly as they do of politics. They direct the movement of armies, challenge the judgment of soldiers, impugn the motives and question the ability of captains, as recklessly sometimes, as they do those of their contemporaries - forgetting, the while, that this too costs blood. Who will dare to say that this is not wrong? No sensible man, however modest he may be to express himself on other subjects, will hesitate to declare that there has been too much interference by civilians with the organization of the army. men deficient in military knowledge - intent to gain instead of glory have intruded themselves in this business,a nd when is too late to remedy this evil, we will find that it too will cost an immense treasure in blood, limb and life.
It is terrible to contemplate the condition of affairs, but it is not too late to apply a remedy. Let the people await with more confidence the organization of the army. Let the authorities who have it is charge be untramelled with this ceaseless complaining - let the military authorities shake off the speculators who have fastened themselves like leeches on their resources - let the military power assert its supremacy within its own department - let it rise above petty jealousy, mean spites and small revenges - let the press be cautious and judicious - let all be more discreet - because if we do not, we must, in our anxiety to discover frauds and denounce wrong, inaugurate a bedlam in our own midst, and dedicate to confusion and anarchy those who should be disciplines for war's rigors and battle's dangers."
"We alluded on Saturday to the destiny of the south, asserting that the tendency of the rebellion which the advocates of slavery were waging against the existence of the Union, must result in the final overthrow of slavery itself on this continent. We maintained this, while we also asserted that such a result was not among the achievements which the government aimed at while it was struggling to maintain its power and authority. The idea that the south would forever monopolize the cotton market of the world, would be proven, among the results of this very revolution, to be false, a fact which a contemporary also maintains by declaring that the cotton- clothed world will have to get its material elsewhere than from the southern states for a time; and though this may be felt to be inconvenient, it will be the means of remedying a great evil. The secession states must be prevented from realizing their cotton crop by both a land and water blockade. This is the overruling necessity of war, and will insure a speedier victory over rebellion; but independent of this, the cause of civilization all over the world will be promoted by it. The interior of Africa has been opened of late by remarkable discoveries by intelligent travelers, and it would seem as if the resources of Africa were delayed to these latter ages for the sake of removing American slavery. Africa will soon be the great source of cotton supply. The cotton there grown is reported to be of longer and better staple, more like our Sea Island cotton, than any grown in India. It is now being cultivated by European, chiefly English capital; and the African laborers are being taught to cultivate the plant with more care. Every year sees an increase of arrivals in English ports of African cotton, and the native African kingdoms and rulers are learning the arts of civilization, and especially that it is more profitable for them to raise and export produce than to sell their countrymen as slaves.
It required the force of a hurricane - in the shape of a civil war like the present, in which the South has forced the North to raise the standard of freedom against the attempted domineering spirit of Southern supremacy - to rot up the hold on the world which slavery had got by its cotton products, raised exclusively by slave labor. All Europe is now enlisted against slavery in the most practical way. The cotton manufactories of the world are thrown for a while on their beam ends - the usual sources of supply have been forcibly stopped - that on which they most depended; and new sources must be encouraged. Such sources are within ready reach. Africa and Asia offer these sources; and the civilizing of the African and the Indian will be hastened by the turning of hundreds of millions of pounds sterling into the hands of those nations, instead of the hands of the Cotton South American Confederacy.
Slavery will be abated and finally extinguished on this continent, and Africans will rise to freedom and intelligence on their own soil. This seems to be the certain result of the present God- sent war. Let us therefore rejoice and persevere accordingly. The petty suffering of the day will terminate in a glorious result to this country and to humanity. Slave and free labor cannot long coexist. One must drive out the other. They are like oil and water - impossible to commingle. The cotton plant, after the bread plant, is most essential to man's civilization. There is no limit to the increase of the consumption of cotton except in that of the race itself. We are a cotton-clothed humanity. Cotton is more suitable for the wants of all than wool or silk or furs or skins of any kind. Cotton, a vegetable product, is much cheaper to raise and to manufacture than any of the others, which are all animal productions. Cotton the world must have, but i t can be obtained in a way consistent with the progress of the world in civilization. Habit and custom in wrong courses are too powerful to change except by violence - by a greater power raised temporarily to overthrow them. The manufacturers of cotton only look to where they can obtain their supplies most readily, cheaply, and steadily, and do not look beyond this point. All or any injustice in the mode of raising the cotton they did not regard. It required, therefor, some storm in the heavens to change this habit and custom. The storm is now raging. The dependence of Europe on a supply of cotton in the southern states is destroyed for ever. The other sources are now being resorted to, and the capital and skill and general power of France and England is being directed to those countries where cotton can be obtained more steadily and more righteously, because raised by free labor.
The northern states of this Republic are therefore fighting the great battle of civilization as well as of freedom and political rights. Immediate action to this was quickened by the domineering spirit of the south, who think it better to reign (if they can) out of the Union than serve within it."
"One fact has heretofore been neglected to our notice of the southern rebels - They are not our equals! If we were contending with a foreign foe, for the decision of some law of nations - some commercial understanding - some treaty of comity, or some right of possession - we would know that we were meeting our equals - men who were impressed with the conviction that they were contending for principle, under the lead and command of gallant and earnest men. But such is not the case with the southern rebels. The case, as it stands, is against the rebels, and therefor they are not our equals. They are not our equals, any more than the burglar is the equal of the owner of the house he attempts feloniously to enter. he may be armed, he may be the stronger man, and he may find the occupant of the house he has entered wrapped in sleep, but still he is not the equal of the sleeper, on the principle that the thieves, burglar and assassins, are not the equals of an honest man. And on this same principle the rebels are not the equals of the freemen who are now in arms to suppress the rebellion. The men who renounced their senatorial oaths, who perjured their souls while in cabinet conferences, who stole the public property while it was in their charge for safe keeping, who applied the public treasure to self aggrandizement, are certainly no the equals of those who have left their peaceable homes to rescue the land from rebellion. Floyd, Davis, Yancey and Toombs, are not the equals of Lincoln, Cameron, Seward or Chase. The former are sanctioning the destruction of public property, the repudiation of private debts, and the organization of anarchy where law and order once prevailed. The latter are struggling to counteract what the former would create, to undo what they have done, and, if possible, save a land that is already bleeding from a thousand wounds, inflicted by rebel traitors, the inferiors of honest freemen.
The inferiority of the southern people engaged in this rebellion is also illustrated in the fact that they are fighting against the government. Theirs is not a revolution that has enlisted the sympathy or received the acknowledgment of the nations of the world. They are rebels; as such they are regarded by every nation in Christendom, and as such, too, they are not the equals of any honest community of men, however humble they may be in the estimation of their neighbors."