The crisis which at the moment dominates conditions in the United States has been brought about by twofold causes: military and political.
Had the last campaign been conducted according to a single strategic plan, the main army of the West must then, as previously explained in these columns, have availed itself of its successes in Kentucky and Tennessee to penetrate through north Alabama to Georgia and to seize there the railroad centers at Decatur, Milledgeville, etc. The connection between the Eastern and the Western army of the Secessionists would thereby have been broken and their mutual support rendered impossible. Instead of this, the Kentucky army marched south down the Mississippi in the direction of New Orleans and its victory near Memphis had no other result than to dispatch the greater part of Beauregard’s troops to Richmond, so that the Confederates here now suddenly confronted McClellan, who had not exploited the defeat of the enemy’s troops at Yorktown and Williamsburg, and on the other hand had from the first split up his own fighting forces, with a superior army in a superior position. McClellan’s generalship, already described by us previously, was in itself sufficient to secure the downfall of the strongest and best-disciplined army. Finally, War Secretary Stanton made an unpardonable mistake. To make an impression abroad, he suspended recruiting after the conquest of Tennessee and so condemned the army to constant attenuation, just when it stood most in need of reinforcements for a rapid, decisive offensive. Despite the strategic blunders and despite McClellan’s generalship, with a steady influx of recruits the war, if not decided by now, would nevertheless have been rapidly nearing a victorious decision. Stanton’s step was so much the more unfortunate as the South was then enlisting every man from 18 to 35 years old, to a man, and was therefore staking everything on a single card. It is those people who have been trained in the meantime that almost everywhere give the Confederates the upper hand and secure the initiative to them. They held Halleck fast, dislodged Curtis from Arkansas, beat McClellan, and under Stonewall Jackson gave the signal for the guerrilla raids that now reach as far as the Ohio.
In part, the military causes of the crisis are connected with the political. It was the influence of the Democratic Party that elevated an incompetent like McClellan, because he was formerly a supporter of Breckinridge, to the position of commander in chief of all the military forces of the North. It was anxious regard for the wishes, advantages, and interests of the spokesmen of the border slave states that hitherto broke off the Civil War’s point of principle and, so to speak, deprived it of its soul. The “loyal” slaveholders of these border states saw to it that the fugitive-slave laws dictated by the South were maintained and the sympathies of the Negroes for the North forcibly suppressed; that no general could venture to put a company of Negroes in the field; and that slavery was finally transformed from the Achilles’ heel of the South into its invulnerable hide of horn. Thanks to the slaves, who perform all productive labors, the entire manhood of the South that is fit to fight can be led into the field!
At the present moment, when secession’s stocks are rising, the spokesmen of the border states increase their claims. However, Lincoln’s appeal to them shows, where it threatens them with inundation by the Abolition party, that things are taking a revolutionary turn. Lincoln knows what Europe does not know, that it is by no means apathy or giving way under pressure of defeat that causes his demand for 300,000 recruits to meet with such a cold response. New England and the Northwest, which have provided the main body of the army, are determined to enforce a revolutionary waging of war on the government and to inscribe the battle slogan of “Abolition of Slavery!” on the star-spangled banner. Lincoln yields only hesitantly and uneasily to this pressure from without, but knows that he is incapable of offering resistance to it for long. Hence his fervent appeal to the border states to renounce the institution of slavery voluntarily and under the conditions of a favorable contract. He knows that it is only the continuance of slavery in the border states that has so far left slavery untouched in the South and prohibited the North from applying its great radical remedy. He errs only if he imagines that the “loyal” slaveholders are to be moved by benevolent speeches and rational arguments. They will yield only to force.
So far we have only witnessed the first act of the Civil War—the constitutional waging of war. The second act, the revolutionary waging of war, is at hand.
Meanwhile, during its first session, the Congress—which has now adjourned—has decreed a series of important measures that we will briefly summarize here:
Apart from its financial legislation, it has passed the Homestead Bill that the Northern popular masses had long striven for in vain; by this, a part of the state lands is given gratis for cultivation to the colonists, whether American-born or immigrants. It has abolished slavery in [the District of] Columbia and the national capital, with monetary compensation for the former slaveholders. Slavery has been declared “forever impossible” in all the Territories of the United States. The Act under which the new State of West Virginia is taken into the Union prescribes abolition of slavery by stages and declares all Negro children born after July 4, 1863, to be born free. The conditions of this emancipation by stages are on the whole borrowed from the law that was enacted 70 years ago in Pennsylvania for the same purpose. By a fourth Act, all slaves of rebels are to be emancipated as soon as they fall into the hands of the republican army. Another law, which is now being put into effect for the first time, provides that these emancipated Negroes may be militarily organized and sent into the field against the South. The independence of the Negro republics of Liberia and Haiti has been recognized, and, finally, a treaty for the abolition of the slave trade has been concluded with England.
Thus, however the dice may fall in the fortunes of battle, it can now safely be said that Negro slavery will not long outlive the Civil War.
Die Presse, August 9, 1862