The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862: Devoted To Literature And National PolicyVarious
History
The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862: Devoted To Literature And National Policy
Various
Literature, Modern -- 19th century -- Periodicals; United States -- Politics and government -- 19th century -- Periodicals
And in those days the different principles involved in this war will
have forced themselves so fiercely to a result that those who contended
for them will seem to have acted almost as vainly as those who were such
children as to resist them. What will become of the Negro if the South
strives to the death, dragging the North down on and after it! What
became of Serfdom during the Thirty Years' War and the other desperate
and exhausting wars which followed it? What will become of Cotton if new
markets are opened, as they must be? England has not realized, as we are
beginning to do, that there is not, can not, and will not be a time,
when both combatants, mutually wearied, must let go. Men do not weary of
war; the new generation grows up fiercer than its fathers. The sooner
England begins to plant her cotton in Jamaica, and Asia Minor and India,
the better it will be for her. Unless we gain some extraordinary Union
victories this autumn, there will be but little cotton planted next year
in Dixie.
We are becoming too strong and fierce for intervention. These be the
days of iron-clads and of great armies. Before England and France engage
in war with a desperate nation like ours, it will be well to think
twice. And we are not at the end yet.
Every man and woman in the North may as well, therefore, be warned
betimes, and give _all_ his and her aid to forwarding this war. It will
not avail to be feeble, or lukewarm, or indifferent, to wish it well and
do nothing, to give a little or dribble out mere kind wishes. Every
one's property is at stake, or will be, and the sooner we go to work in
right earnest the better. Had we one year ago done what we are even now
doing--had we sprung up like a grizzly bear on a buffalo, and given it
for its insolent kick a sudden, tremendous blow, tearing through its
very heart, we should not have dragged out a year of doubt. It is our
curse that we are always 'just a little' behind the enemy in enthusiasm.
In due time we shall be in the struggle for life--the faster we advance,
the better it will be for us.
On and on and on! We are marching on, and will we, nill we, must conquer
or perish.
'Ye mountains that see us descend to the shore
Must view us as victors or view us no more!'
It is written that North-America is to rise purified, regenerated, and
perfectly free from the most tremendous and probably exhaustive struggle
in history. Believe it, you who live in it--_premonitus,
premunitus_--'forewarned is to be forearmed.'
* * * * *
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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