Very Cunning.
The New York Herald is out of patience with the abolitionists in the Yankee Congress for passing the confiscation bill with such hot haste. Passed amidst the echo of Jackson's guns on the Upper Potomac, that paper can think of nothing better to compare it to than the fiddling of Nero while Rome was burning. The discussion of this and similar bills, it says, and the foolish proclamations of the Yankee Generals, have revived the sinking cause of the rebels, and brought them back in triumph to the vicinity of Washington. These things have been worth two hundred thousand men to their cause. But for them the rebellion would long since have died a natural death, and no more than fifty thousand men would have been needed to prevent it from showing any further signs of life.Yet the Herald is far from disapproving of the acts themselves. It is upon the question of time that it takes issue with Sumner and Wilson. ‘"Let the rebels,"’ says the Herald, ‘"be first subdued, and the authority of the Federal Government established in the insurgent States, and then the question of preventing a recurrence of is in order. Most certainly to hold out beforehand a sweeping measure of confiscation, making no distinction between leaders and their deluded followers, is not the way to put down the rebellion, for there is no inducement left to the rebels to yield." ’ The Herald's view of the matter is certainly correct. It was most impolitic to let us see beforehand what was designed for us if we should be so unfortunate as to fall into the power of the Yankees. It is calculated, by leaving us no hope, to make us fight much harder than we should ever have done had we been left under the delusion that we should be treated with a generous indulgence. The Herald has nothing to say against the confiscation further than this. It finds no fault with the law itself. It would be one of the last to mate out mercy to the vanquished. But the abolitionists ought not to have shown their hand until they had them in their power. This is the sum and substance of the Herald's complaint.
For our own part, we feel greatly obliged to the abolitionists. They have, without intending it, done us a most essential service. They have done more to unite all parties in the South than the most thorough pro slavery man could have done by twenty years of preaching and writing. The South understands perfectly the position in which it is placed, and it must be very stupid, indeed, if it fail to take advantage of the knowledge thus imparted.
