The summer campaign.
The summer campaign has begun auspiciously for the Southern Confederacy. The battles of the Wilderness and Fredericksburg (the second) have added largely to the renown of the sons of the South as a warlike and resolute people, determined to be free. The bold cavalry raid under Stoneman is more than off setted by that under Jones and Imboden.--Stoneman did very little injury to the railroads and none to the canal. He burned some bridges spanning the canal, and a very substantial one at Elk Island built by Mr. Randolph Harrison; but these were all for the accommodation of neighborhood communities. The transportation along the canal is not at all interrupted by anything the raiders did. These facts illustrate the wanton and ruthless spirit of our invaders. Driven by Fitzhugh Lee from Columbia, where their main feat of diabolism was to have been performed, they attack and destroy the little neighborhood bridges, imitating the mastiff, who, kicked out of the kitchen, falls upon the first innocent duck that is in his way.On the other hand, Jones and Imboden have returned safely with 600 prisoners and several thousand horses and cattle, after having seriously injured the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad and the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal.--They, moreover, penetrated into Maryland and Pennsylvania, exciting the wildest alarm lest our men should imitate the vandalism of the Yankees in their invasion of the South.--Their raid will certainly offset Stoneman's. --The merit of a raid consists in its destructiveness, and that of our raid makers having done more injury than that of the Yankees, of course it is the better raid of the two.
The summer, we repeat, begins auspiciously for our arms in Virginia. What if we loose a good and great man and some of our best troops — it was the will of Providence — They perished, if they did perish, worthily as they wished, in their country's cause, amidst the shouts of triumph. But they perished not — their spirit and example live, and we know that the cause which made such Heroes will continue to vindicate itself to the day of final deliverance!
In the Southwest the combined aquatic and land fights have been all gloriously in our favor. In the skirmishing and manœnvring on the land there is merely the premonitory of greater conflicts and imminent events that are to follow. But in most of these we have had the advantage, and they display the maintenance of the high courage and constancy of the soldier of the South, which in the battle-field have made him equal to the immense odds brought against him. The great achievements in Virginia will cheer up the Southern heart, and we hope and believe will be imitated in the Southwest by deeds alike honorable to our fame and strengthening to our cause.
The midsummer sun will soon be upon the South, and what the enemy does he must do quickly. Faithfully confiding in our men and our cause, we cannot believe that the enemy is destined to gain any material advantages, near or remote. If we foil him, however, now, he will soon have to encounter the Southern sun and the Southern malaria, which will be equal to a large army against him, while at home he must sustain the damaging consequences of a retarded advance and a postponed subjugation of the South. The elements of dissatisfaction and discord will be powerful in marring the schemes of the Washington despotism in proportion to the firmness and success with which we repulse its armies in the South.
This is the conclusion to which we must always come. After all, it is alone upon our own courage and fidelity that we can rely.--Discord at the home of the invader — aversion to him amongst civilized people abroad — can only be made active and efficient for his discomfiture by our own undying and unflagging devotion to our beloved country. Thank God! we have the men who can exhibit these virtues in their noblest form.
