iors in the art of spreading
plausible reports. Acting together 'like one man,' a falsehood from
head-quarters is at once disseminated from Richmond to New-Orleans, and
the North is promptly victimized. At present their game is to make us
discredit their own forces, having learned that our belief in the extent
of their army is only a stimulus to Northern exertions. The truth is,
that the Confederacy never had so large an army as at present, or in
such excellent condition. They have been gathering up the odds and ends;
they have learned day by day to make better soldiers of them; they have
abundant food, are on the whole well armed, and it is rank folly in us
to rely on their weakness. Only an overwhelming force--the entire force
of the North--can now conquer them, and to make even this available, our
Government must have recourse to the most determined and daring
measures. It is no longer a question of suppressing rebellion, but of
defense; of conquering or being conquered. Were we at this instant to
consent to the independence of the Confederacy, it would not be
accepted. The Southerner, easily depressed by defeat, becomes arrogant
in the hour of victory, and would exact such conditions as we could
never endure.

The South, by successful secession, would take with it all our
prosperity and all our power. It would take the Border States and the
control of the Mississippi, and worse than this, it would _establish_ a
war which would rage without intermission until we should be crushed,
perhaps into literal tribute and vassalage. Every dispute arising from
our entangled neighborhood--and these would be innumerable--would be
determined with an insolence and a cruelty far surpassing any thing
which we have heretofore experienced; and at every manifestation of
unwillingness on our part to submit, we should have the sword tauntingly
thrown in the balance. With foreign aid and foreign allies they could
soon make our condition more galling than death. We should be the butt
of every nation, humiliated and trampled on in every international
dispute, and in every such difficulty the South would become the great
power of America, and its rising sun would easily find means to abuse us
still further.

Is this picture exaggerated? Let the reader shake off the fetters of old
custom and see the literal truths of life and what it is capable of
becoming. The South seriously proposes to establish itself as a
permanently military nation. T