3 missible basis of any conceivable peace. This well fixed in the Confederate.mind, there will be no more fearful looking for news from Europe, as if that blessed peace were to come to us over the sea, and not to be conquered on our own ground. There will be no more gaping for hints of recognition and filling of the belly with the East wind; no more distraction or diversion from the single momentous business of bracing up every nerve and sinew of the country for battle. It is especially now, at the moment when great and perhaps •decisive battles are impending at two or three points, that we think it most essential to insist upon the grand and entire magnificence of the stake and cause. Once more we say it is all or nothing. This Confederacy or the Yankee nation, one or other, goes down, down to perdition. That is to say, one or the other must forfeit its national existence and lie at the mercy of its mortal enemy. We all know by this time the fate in store for us if we succumb. The other party has no smaller stake. As surely as we completely ruin their armies—and without that is no peace nor truce at all—so surely shall we make them pay our war debt, though we .wring it out of their hearts. And they know it well, and, therefore, they cannot make peace except through their utter exhaustion, and absolute inability to strike another blow. The stake they have to forfeit, then, if they lose this dreadful game, is vital to ours. So is the stake to be won if they win anything. It is no less than the entire possession of our whole country, with us in it, and everything that is ours, from Ohio to the Rio Grande, to have and to hold* to them and their heirs forever. But, on the other hand, what we mean to win is utter separation from them for all time. We do not want to govern their country, but after levying upon it what seemeth good to us by way of indemnity, we leave it to commence its political life again from the beginning, hoping that the lesson may have made them sadder and wiser Yankees. We shut them out forever, with all their unclean and scoundrelly ways, intending to lead our lives here in our own Confed-1 erate way, within our own well-guarded bounds, and without, as St. John says, are dogs. And let no Confederate feeble knees and tremulous backbone say to us, this complete triumph is impossible; say that we must be content with some kind of compromise, and give and take ; on the contrary, we must gain all or lose all, and that the Confederates will indeed win the giant game, we take to be as certain as any future event in this uncertain world. Meade’s army and Rosecranz’ once scattered, Lincoln can get no more armies. The draft turns out manifestly fruitless. Both the German and Irish element are now for peace. The Yankees have to bear the brunt of the war themselves, but in the meantime their inevitable bankruptcy is advancing like an
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