The North and the South.
A friend just returned from the North expresses his surprise at the appearance of cheerfulness and business activity that prevails everywhere. He would not know that war existed here at all but for occasional movements of military stores, and the appearance of uniformed men in the streets.At the North, he says, there it an entirely different state of the public mind. There is great anxiety and serious apprehension evident in the faces of the people. The same people that eight month since were rampant for war, zealous in raising money for it and calling out lustily for putting down the rebellion, are now silent and melancholy. While business is stagnant and the streets deserted, men are dreadfully impressed with the weight of taxation incurred by the war, and see no hope of putting down the rebellion. They are sharp enough to see what amount of interest alone is involved in a debt of seven hundred millions some of which is borrowed at 7 and 7.30-100 per cent. They know that the entire annual revenue of the old Union did not amount to as much as the interest upon this enormous one year's debt. They see that the Northern Union can never pay it and pay its current expenses too; and they are losing faith in the war and the Government also. The universal Yankee nation, in short, begins to see that the war don't pay.!
Our informant confidently, and very naturally, looks forward to a resistance of the war tax. He predicts the organization of a party on the principle of the higher law, which will decide that the war was unwise, foolish, and unholy, and therefore they will neither pay to continue it, nor help to pay the debt incurred for it, though it be discontinued. The Government Treasury notes are losing credit, and people begin to say they never will be redeamed, while the Government has no other resource and no export commerce, now that the Southern States are separated from the North, upon which to base their credit.
Thus it may well-be inferred that in six months in the absence of some great victory over the South the Northern Government will be reduced to desperation — having no credit abroad or at home, and being the object of universal contempt. What can hold such a Government together.
It is anticipations such as these that sadden and lond the public mind of the North, while here at the South the faith in a just Providence, A just cause, and A Loyal people, lend to the public countenance that confident hope and cheerfulness which we may everywhere behold, and which were so much admired by our Virginia fellow-citizen just come home after a long confinement in Fort Warren.
