* * * * *

As we write, there is a panic in Richmond, caused by the discovery that
there is a large body of Union men in the city itself, headed by JOHN
MINOR BOTTS, who seems to have determined to 'head off' the secession
party in its stronghold, 'or die'--he having, since the decease of JOHN
TYLER, turned his 'heading off' abilities against JEFF DAVIS. The
_Examiner_ mentions, in terror, the confession of the Union prisoners,
that there are in Richmond 'thousands of arms concealed, and men
enrolled, who would use them on the first approach of the Yankee army.'
One of the arrested, a Mr. STEARNS, when led to the prison, surveyed it
in a most contemptuous manner, remarking 'If you are going to imprison
all the Union men in Richmond, you will have to provide a much larger
jail than this.'

It is the German residents of Richmond who are said to constitute the
majority of these Union men. All honor to our German friends of the
South! They have received, thus far, too little credit for their staunch
adherence to the principles of freedom. Let them take courage; a day is
coming when we shall all be free--free from _every_ form of slavery!
_Noch ist die Freiheit nicht verloren_!--'Freedom is not lost as yet.'
Some of them remember _that_ song of old.

* * * * *

A paragraph has recently gone the rounds, which impudently assures the
friends of Emancipation that, unless they promptly desist from further
interference or agitation, they will speedily build up a Southern party
in the North, which will seriously interfere with the prosecution of the
war!

That is to say, that the majority of the people of the North fully
acquiesce in the justice of the main principles held by the South--the
only difference of opinion being whether these slavery and
slavery-extension doctrines can be practically developed under our
federal Union! Yet we, knowing, seeing, feeling, in this war, the
enormously evil effects of the slave system on the free men among whom
it exists, are expected to endure and legalize _the cause_ which stirred
it up! Either the South is right or wrong--there is no escaping the
dilemma. Either it was or was not justly goaded by 'abolition' into
secession. If the South is _quite_ right in wishing to preserve slavery
intact forever, surely those are in the wrong who would make war on it
for wishing to secede from a government which tolerates attacks on
l