THE LESSON OF LEESBURG.
DAY by day, almost hour by hour, the English t lief in the military strength of the North slowly decays away. The defeat at Bull's Run gave a fatal sh k to the small remains of confidence which had survive American Our sympathy is with the cause of the North, not with thrashed by superior numbers and generalship, turned again its people or administration. Even apart from the great and again on the foe. That they had no means of retreat, anti-slavery struggle which the North is unconsciously except swimming, was surely no fault of theirs, and the waging, we hold that national existence is a worthy object audacity which advances to action without a thought of the of battle, and that the division of North America into half means of retiring is not exactly the spirit of which a dozen jarring republics, who will fight with all the virulence soldiers cannot be made. The want of competent officers natural to their kinsmanship, and all the savage energy in- is still a terrible evil, more especially as it is scarcely herent in their blood, is a heavy blow to the best interests of felt in the Confederate army, but already the repulse has mankind. But we have no love for the North with its bragging given the President courage to give commissions to picked talk and unprincipled politics, its injustice to England and privates out of the regular ranks. They may not make mean-spirited tolerance of evils its best men ought to detest, good officers, it is true, but they will act admirably the part and so feeling we have never attempted to palliate either which the non-commissioned act in the British army, and they defeat or blunder. Bull's Run showed an utter want of dis- will at least obey orders promptly and with intelligence. So cipline, and the retreat of the three-months men something again with the navy. We all remark, and with justice, that a great deal worse. Lexington was lost chiefly by want of the men sent in the expedition which has just started are promptitude and common military foresight, while Leesburg probably all too raw. W We all, perhaps, have decided that was a blunder as disgraceful as Walcheren. So far as we 31 vessels do not, and cannot, carry an army of fifty thousand can perceive, the army under McClellan is an over-swollen men. But they do carry 18,000, and the truth is note-worthy mass of militia, half-drilled, half-disciplined, and without enough. It is just this : the Federal Government, with its officers except McClellan himself; incapable as yet of the navy gone and its army unofficered, has in three months so forward march it will be compelled to make, and extremely repaired its strength that it can send, in a fleet as large as it likely when the march is made to be repulsed once more. ever possessed, an invading force as strong as its whole Anything more inefficient than the organization which per- regular army, and regard that exertion of strength as fit only mite General Scott to send orders without his subordinate's to create a diversion. The expedition will probably do very knowledge, or General McClellan to apologize in a formal little, for, as we said, it is composed of raw men, but its order to his troops for a defeat " for which they were not failure will simply lead to other and stronger efforts. The responsible," it is difficult to imagine. We admit all this, Americans have on warlike affairs everything to learn. The and more—the wretched cabals against Fremont, the divided popular ignorance, as displayed by the editors, is almost in- counsels, the barbaric regard for numbers—and admitting conceivable, but lessons are readily learnt when the penalty it all, we contend that this is not the whole of the case, even of failure is death. The training would be more rapid were in its strictly military point of view. the chiefs of the nation more competent to direct it, but it The Americans are learning like every other race, like the proceeds in spite of all drawbacks, and the first competent French before Valmy, that battles are won by training for man who rises to the top will find an instrument really effi- battles, that nothing will compensate for discipline, that dent all ready made to his hand. The very instant the enthusiasm will no more stay a defeat than patriotism will lesson is learnt, the struggle is reduced to true military con- stop a well-aimed rifle-ball. They are learning their lesson ditions, and the power which can dispose of the largest well. Outside the actual camp every fact yet ascertained force and raise the largest revenue must, in the end, win in has been thoroughly creditable to their endurance. The the field, win so far as to dictate terms of peace, to claim the North has been beaten for months, which in their excite- border states, to occupy all territory west of the Mississippi, ment have been equal to years, and the Northern army is to restrict the South within its smallest natural limits, and greater, better appointed, better provided, better drilled, and to place slavery, if it exists, within an impassable barrier of more strictly American than it was when the war began. restrictions. Defeat, so far from cowing the people, is bringing them fast No such result as this is probable this year. The North to the ranks, to the exclusion of the Irish and Germanie has still to be rid of its impracticable constitution, still to whose flight we quote to prove the Americans cowards. Bad find the Government which can wield its enormous materiel, as the army under McClellan may be, it is very different from still to be beaten into the temper which turns to discipline the mob which thronged the spirit-shops of Washington as a resource. The army will possibly winter at Washington, after the opening of the campaign. The people behind the and as the interval so spent will increase all discontent with army show no sign either of fear or hesitation. The wretched the existing arrangements, it is scarcely to be regretted. rogues whom Americans call politicians, and whom universal We hope little from Mr. Lincoln, who, though honest by braggadocio, and every successive event has deepened the the information which reaches us, so far from being cowed, first impression. The incessant rumours of Western victory, they are rising up to that temper in which men are at once in- . followed invariably, by news of defeat, the loss of Lexington, accessible to reason, and invincible. They are finding men, and the hesitation in Western Virginia, the failure before New they are finding money, in spite of scientific demonstrations Orleans, the palpable want of confidence between generals that neither can be procured. Fettered and cramped by an and their men, all tend to increase the belief that, whatever impotent constitution, led by men of the calibre of the their political disadvantages, the South is the stronger in the directors of some rotten railway board, with no great soldier i field. And now this disaster of Leesburg has come to give in their ranks, and no great statesman to direct their course, the finishing stroke to the picture. In this affair nothing is they are still adhering, in spite of fortune, to the cause they wanting to complete the impression of imbecility. Whole believe to be that of their country. What there is to despise brigades sent out on a reconnoissance, nobodyknows bywhom, in such a course is not visible to our eyes, nor is the wisdom without distinct orders, or definite plan, or sufficient provi- of contempt plain to men who remember that these were the sion, a battle fought with a river behind, no means of retreat English opinions of France between 1789 and the accession ever thought of, a regular defeat, a panic, and a massacre of Carnet to power ; that France then, as America now was such as recals the soldiers' tales of Sobraon,—these are facts pronounced, and pronounced by Burke, a power paralyzed to which the plain English mind attaches but one clear for external warfare. Her army was gone, her recruits meaning. The North, says all England, is beaten in the had their heads shaved for cowardice, and general after field. That is palpably Mr. Russell's impression, favourable general raised from the ranks regretted he had not as be is to the Northern people, and it is the view repeated stayed there. The American people offer any amount of to weariness in hundreds of English journals. It has long power, submit to the extinction of every prejudice and been that of the aristocracy, and of all connected with cotton, of far too many rights, let the State Governments go, and is becoming that of the middle class, whose horror of let the press go, let trade go, let everything go, except slavery has hitherto been sufficient to conquer their acute what they regard as their country. In the army itself the dislike of the unsuccessful. It is, therefore, without the improvement is just as manifest. Leesburg was a defeat like slightest hope of public assent, that we once more express Mill's Run, but of a very different kind. At Bull's Run the our conviction that the public mind is too hasty, that it has mass fled from an enemy no man saw, and with no pursuer forgotten too rapidly the lessons of history, and that it mis- at hand ; at Leesburg the first slaughter was effected with takes, as it mistook in the French Revolution, an annealing revolvers ; the Federalists marched up undet a withering process for one of disintegration. fire till faces could be discerned, and when fairly and honestly Our sympathy is with the cause of the North, not with thrashed by superior numbers and generalship, turned again its people or administration. Even apart from the great and again on the foe. That they had no means of retreat, anti-slavery struggle which the North is unconsciously except swimming, was surely no fault of theirs, and the waging, we hold that national existence is a worthy object audacity which advances to action without a thought of the of battle, and that the division of North America into half means of retiring is not exactly the spirit of which a dozen jarring republics, who will fight with all the virulence soldiers cannot be made. The want of competent officers natural to their kinsmanship, and all the savage energy in- is still a terrible evil, more especially as it is scarcely herent in their blood, is a heavy blow to the best interests of felt in the Confederate army, but already the repulse has mankind. But we have no love for the North with its bragging given the President courage to give commissions to picked talk and unprincipled politics, its injustice to England and privates out of the regular ranks. They may not make mean-spirited tolerance of evils its best men ought to detest, good officers, it is true, but they will act admirably the part and so feeling we have never attempted to palliate either which the non-commissioned act in the British army, and they defeat or blunder. Bull's Run showed an utter want of dis- will at least obey orders promptly and with intelligence. So cipline, and the retreat of the three-months men something again with the navy. We all remark, and with justice, that a great deal worse. Lexington was lost chiefly by want of the men sent in the expedition which has just started are promptitude and common military foresight, while Leesburg probably all too raw. W We all, perhaps, have decided that was a blunder as disgraceful as Walcheren. So far as we 31 vessels do not, and cannot, carry an army of fifty thousand can perceive, the army under McClellan is an over-swollen men. But they do carry 18,000, and the truth is note-worthy mass of militia, half-drilled, half-disciplined, and without enough. It is just this : the Federal Government, with its officers except McClellan himself; incapable as yet of the navy gone and its army unofficered, has in three months so forward march it will be compelled to make, and extremely repaired its strength that it can send, in a fleet as large as it likely when the march is made to be repulsed once more. ever possessed, an invading force as strong as its whole Anything more inefficient than the organization which per- regular army, and regard that exertion of strength as fit only mite General Scott to send orders without his subordinate's to create a diversion. The expedition will probably do very knowledge, or General McClellan to apologize in a formal little, for, as we said, it is composed of raw men, but its order to his troops for a defeat " for which they were not failure will simply lead to other and stronger efforts. The responsible," it is difficult to imagine. We admit all this, Americans have on warlike affairs everything to learn. The and more—the wretched cabals against Fremont, the divided popular ignorance, as displayed by the editors, is almost in- counsels, the barbaric regard for numbers—and admitting conceivable, but lessons are readily learnt when the penalty it all, we contend that this is not the whole of the case, even of failure is death. The training would be more rapid were in its strictly military point of view. the chiefs of the nation more competent to direct it, but it The Americans are learning like every other race, like the proceeds in spite of all drawbacks, and the first competent French before Valmy, that battles are won by training for man who rises to the top will find an instrument really effi- battles, that nothing will compensate for discipline, that dent all ready made to his hand. The very instant the enthusiasm will no more stay a defeat than patriotism will lesson is learnt, the struggle is reduced to true military con- stop a well-aimed rifle-ball. They are learning their lesson ditions, and the power which can dispose of the largest well. Outside the actual camp every fact yet ascertained force and raise the largest revenue must, in the end, win in has been thoroughly creditable to their endurance. The the field, win so far as to dictate terms of peace, to claim the North has been beaten for months, which in their excite- border states, to occupy all territory west of the Mississippi, ment have been equal to years, and the Northern army is to restrict the South within its smallest natural limits, and greater, better appointed, better provided, better drilled, and to place slavery, if it exists, within an impassable barrier of more strictly American than it was when the war began. restrictions.
after the opening of the campaign. The people behind the and as the interval so spent will increase all discontent with really in earnest, as we believe all but the politicians and mob to be, they will fight on with a persistency growing always more deadly as they become more inured to war, and as the West begins to throw its weight more strongly into the struggle. There is no wish for compromise there, at all events, and in America, as in everywhere else, it is the men of extreme opinions who during revolutions ultimately claim the lead. We have discussed the position of the South in another column, and we here only repeat that the process which the American republic is undergoing is identical with that which the French republic survived, and that the Ame- ricans in proportion as the war lasts will emerge from it a harder, sterner, more competent, and probably more dis- agreeable people than ever.
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