The Northwest.
It is in vain that the Yankee press seek to disguise the serious disaffection which prevails in their Western provinces. The Northwest, which like the South, has been always made tributary to the manufactures and commerce of New England, and which has borne the brunt of the present war, is beginning to sigh for peace, or if peace cannot be otherwise obtained is preparing to calculate the value of the Union. We do not imagine that this feeling is universal. The Republican element is of course for war, and wherever there is a strong infusion of Puritan population, as there is in many portions of the Northwest, we need expect only the most embittered and implacable hate. But the mass of the Northwestern population is not Puritan. The majority is not Republican. The interests of the Northwest are with the South and not with New England. That it has furnished the bravest and hardiest troops to the Union during the war, is no evidence of its intense Yankeeism of character or peculiar hatred of the South. The qualities of courage and resolution are in general allied with generosity and chivalry. The men who faced each other in the death grapple at Murfreesboro' may, in reality, be more alike and have more sympathy with each other than the Northwest and the Yankees. It is true that the Northwest is the home of Lincoln; button is in a minority in his own State, in his own county, and his own town. When we speak of the Northwest we speak of the party which is in the ascendant, and of what its evident interests dictate. For the interests of a people are the only key to its policy, and the interests of the Northwest are with the South, and not with New England.What, then, should be the course of the South to the Northwest? In the first place, to fight them with knives in both hands till we have driven them off our soil, and made them thoroughly understand that wants the very last process on the face of the earth by which they can obtain an unobstructed and prosperous navigation of the Mississippi river, or by which, even if successful they can obtain anything but a desert. We must fight them to the death. A few great, crushing victories will be the best and only efficacious inducements to peace we can offer them. Not that we presume upon their timidity or resolution. They have demonstrated their fighting qualities beyond all dispute, and can afford, without lose of reputation, to relinquish a war which is only ruinous to their prosperity, and in which they are only made subservient to the interests and passions of New England.
The Northwest has in itself the materials of a great empire. There is room enough in North America for three Republics, and it would be for the common interest, and maintain a proper balance of power, that there should be three instead of two. We can all live in greater peace and her many apart than under one Government. With the Northwest our relations would necessarily be friendly. It seems to us that there is nothing inconsistent in the stern determination to be exterminated rather than be conquered by the Northwest, and the avowal of our readiness to respond in a friendly spirit to all amicable demonstrations from that section. The motive by which these demonstrations are prompted may be of interest; if so, that only makes it more certain that the demonstrations are in earnest and mean business.