Won't come out.
--We alluded some time age to the defiant position assumed by our Generals on the Potomac, stating that they had offered battle to the enemy under every circumstance of provocation and insult — that they had flirted the Confederate banner in their faces in night of the Capitol at Washington, and that the enemy had pocketed these aggravating insults with the meekness of Christian men whose duty it is to submit with patience to all the contumely that the world may think proper to fasten upon them. The National Intelligencer, having gotten hold of the number in which this article appeared, makes an extract from it, calls it a ‘"rantipole effusion,"’ and replies to it as follows:‘ "We have no doubt that the attitude of the Federal army betrays a wonderful degree of stolidity. It is, indeed, most unaccountable that the National soldiers should prefer to fight behind the entrenchments which they have taken so much trouble to erect, when it would be the easiest thing in the world to waive this advantage in favor of the chivalrous adversary, who, it seems, is eager for the fray, but has no stomach for a fight in which the storming of redoubts is to be a part. Why should there be any false delicacy on this score? What adds to its strangeness is the recollection that our Southern contemporaries, soon after the battle of Bull Run, left it to be understood that the only reason why Gen. Beauregard did not instantly proceed to the capture of Washington was the inadequacy of his means of transportation and the paucity of his force — deficiencies which, it was said, would soon be supplied, and then "Forward to Washington" would be the watchword. Nothing was said at that time about any obstructions, such as forts, breastworks, or redoubts, with all and singular their appurtenances, in the shape of parapets, scarp walls, ditches, counter-scarps, covered ways, and glacis. Nor was it given out that the object of the 'forward movement' was simply to 'flirt the flag of the Confederacy in full view of the White House and the Capitol.'"
’ So then it appears, after all, that this ‘"rantipole effusion"’ speaks the simple truth, and nothing more. The Yankees are really afraid to come out of their hiding places. They dare not meet the Confederates in the open field. They prefer submission to every manner of taunt and insult, to another trial of conclusions upon the terms of Bull Run. They trust in their ‘"breastworks, redoubts, forts, with all and singular their appurtenances in the shape of parapets, scarp walls, ditches, counter-scarps, covered ways, and glacis" ’--in anything rather than their own manhood. Superior numbers are to them as nothing. The boasted arrivals of reinforcements at the rate, the Star tells us, of 35,000 in one week, and the Baltimore American says of 16,000 in another, cannot raise their courage to the sticking point. They are cowed, subdued, broken in spirit, without confidence in themselves, completely under hack, and not to be seduced into another Bull Run experiment. ‘"On to Richmond"’ is no longer the war cry of the Grand Army. Stick to your entrenchments, and keep as far as possible out of danger, is now the order of the day.
The article which calls forth this leader in the Intelligencer was elicited by the continual boasting of the enemy, designed to impose upon foreign nations and upon the Yankee and foreign population of New York, who know nothing of the actual condition of affairs, save in so far as they can learn it from the lying Yankee newspapers. The New York Herald had told the world that the Yankees had proved their superior manhood, and cited the battle of Manassas as a proof.--Old Butler had taunted Magruder for not coming out, with one regiment and four companies of infantry and two companies of artillery, with seven pieces, from his slender works at Bethel — which would have offered scarcely an impediment to resolute men — and fighting his six regiments in the open field. The Herald was constantly telling us, when ever we gained a victory, that its friend enacted prodigies of valor, and were only beaten by superior numbers. If there was that great superiority of quality on the side of the Yankees, we could not conceive how they could endure to be insulted in sight of their very Capital, as they constantly were by the Confederates, and we said so. It seems, however, that all this boasting and all this assumption of superiority was, in point of fact, exactly what we supposed it to be — a tissue of lying exaggeration from one end to the other. They dare not meet us in the field, even with the overwhelming odds which they must certainly possess, if all the tales they tell about reinforcements be true.
The National Intelligencer confesses, by this article, that the ‘"Union,"’ which it pretends to be supporting, is gone. The very semblance of it — the Capital and the flag — can only be kept from annihilation by gigantic works, which one of its own party says are stronger than those of Gibraltar. What has become of the threat to march to Richmond? How is the conquest of the South to be effected? Armies of subjugation and conquest do not sit down behind breastworks, and put their faith in counter scarps and glacis. And if McClellan can do no better than that, he had as well explain to his employers at once that they are fighting for a shadow. If, instead of overrunning the South and forcing her into a reluctant union with the Yankees, he can only hold his own by means of his entrenchments, he has already abandoned everything that he professes to be fighting for, and to persevere is desperate wickedness.
