“No. It is the government that needs rousing. We do not need meetings on the Hudson, but motion on the Potomac. It is not in Boston, or Buffalo, or Cincinnati, or New York that this case is to be settled, but in Washington. There is no use of concealing it. The people are beginning to distrust their rulers—not their good nature, their patriotism, their honesty, but their capacity for the exigency of military affairs. They know that in war an hour often carries a campaign in its hand. A day is a year. The President seems to be a man without any sense of the value of time. The people admire his disinterestedness. They believe him firm when he reaches decisions. But they perceive how long a period he requires to form judgments; how wide a circuit he takes of uncertainty and vacillation before he determines. In civil affairs, that can bear to wait, the people deem him among the best of our long line of Presidents. But it is war! Armies are perishing. Months are wasting. We are in the second year of rebellion. We have been just on the eve of doing something for sixteen months! “The nation rose up in its majesty to punish rebellion. It put a magnificent army into the President’s hand. For one year that army was _besieged_ in the capital! “At length, this past spring, began the campaign in Virginia. The people gloried in the belief that the majesty of the government would be asserted. After four months’ campaign the armies of the United States are on the _defensive_! Not less than a hundred thousand men have been lost by death, wounds, sickness, and captivity; McClellan is cooped up on James River; Pope is collecting an army; and the country is to-day actually debating whether the enemy cannot strike a blow at Washington! Is this such a management as will confirm the confidence of the country in Mr. Lincoln’s conduct of the war? Do we need to ask why men are slow to volunteer? Does any man need to be told what the end of such things must be? This is not punishing rebellion; it is helping it.... “We speak plainly, sorrowfully, earnestly. An enemy of the Administration would have no right to speak so. We are friends—all the more because we speak out what millions think but do not utter, lest it might hinder the cause. But, unless some one speaks, there will soon be little cause left to hinder or to help.” In the next issue, that of July 24, he has another two-column editorial upon “The Duty of To-day”: “In the beginning of this great struggle the question among loyal men was, _How_ shall we save this nation? One year of fighting and the question is, WHETHER we can save it? That is the question of to-day.... “The South has simplicity and unity of purpose. The North is uncertain which she wishes most—to subdue the rebellion, to leave slavery unharmed, or to have the right President at the next election!