e 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
Morristown revolt, which Washington put down at once by the aid of his
faithful Massachusetts