The message of the President, in another column, will be read with more profound interest than any document ever issued by a public officer in this country. It is not necessary to enumerate the several points which it makes. He does not disguise the danger with which he conceives the country and the capital to be surrounded. He states the only means by which, in his opinion, it can be met and averted. If his recommendations be not attended to, he throws the responsibility on Congress, which has now been in session since November without having provided by legislation for the essential points alluded to.
Whatever Congress may intend to do in the premises, we trust they will do at once. This is no time for deliberation, when the enemy are actually thundering at the gates of the capital. The moments lost in speech-making may prove of the last importance, for weal or woe, to the Confederacy. Prompt action is what is now required — prompt action, and nothing more.
Congress will feel that its legislation, thus far, has not been sufficient. The country already feels this, and we think it is hardly necessary to appeal to the patriotism of Congress to supply what is wanting. We feel assured that there is enough of that sentiment among members to render them superior to all other considerations, at this trying moment, except the good of their country.
Above all other things, however, we unite with the President in his appeal for unanimity. Let us not now, in the fourth year of this desperate struggle, exhibit the spectacle of those European States on the continent who, while everything on earth they held dear was at stake, could not, in the very presence of the enemy, restrain their senseless quarrels long enough to prevent him from taking advantage of them to their common destruction. It requires all our united strength to ward off the danger; and if the least particle of all be wanting, we are lost. It would be to the country the most welcome of all intelligence that harmony existed between all parts of the Government, State and Confederate, and that all were uniting for the benefit of all.
It is vain for us to look back. We cannot go back if we would. A fiery gulf lies between us and the Union which we left. A remorseless enemy offers us no terms but abject and absolute submission. Unless upon the precedent condition of submission to all he may require, he will not even condescend to hear a single word we have to say. We are reduced to the condition of having no choice between slavery in the vilest and most aggravating form — slavery implying the right on the part of the master not only to prescribe the terms on which we shall live, but even to abridge the term of life itself at option, and independence and freedom, purchased at many risks, and by mighty labors. Submission will not do. The enemy spurns the offer. There is nothing left for us but to fight it out.
