In remembering the Battle of New Orleans, we forget that the Southwest was then a region of hardy pioneers, such as are now rather to be sought for in Kansas and California.  The famous Tennessee riflemen of that day were not necessarily slaveholders, and their legitimate descendants are yet to be found among the brave men who rally round the nearest approach to Andrew Jackson whom the State now boasts,—­a tolerable fac-simile both as to character and etymology,—­Andrew Johnson.  There is no need of disparaging the personal courage of any man, and the Southern army has some good officers,—­too good, probably, in spite of themselves, to bring to bear their clearest judgment and their best energies in striking down the flag they have all sworn to die for.  They have eminent foreign advisers also, or one at least; for Mr. W.H.  Russell, self-appointed plenipotentiary near the Court of St. Jefferson, is said to have lent the aid of his valuable military experience to that commanding officer so appropriately named Captain Bragg.  But, Bragg or no brag, it is almost a moral impossibility that a slaveholding army should be strong.

The Secessionists have suggested to us a fatal argument.  “The superior race must control the inferior.”  Very well; if they insist on invoking the ordeal by battle to decide which is the superior, let it be so.  It will be found that they have made the common mistake of confounding barbarism with strength.  Because the Southern masses are as ignorant of letters and of arts as the Scottish Highlanders, they infer themselves to be as warlike.  But even the brave and hardy Highlanders proved powerless against the imperfect military resources of England, a century ago, and it is not easy to see why those who now parody them should fare better.  The absence of the alphabet does not necessarily prove the presence of strength, nor is the ignorance of all useful arts the best preparation for the elaborate warfare of modern times.  The nation is grown well weary of this sham “chivalry,” that would sell Bayard or Du Gueselin at auction, if it could be shown that the mother of either had a drop of marketable blood in her veins.  It had always been charitably fancied that in South Carolina at least there was some remnant of more knightly honor, until a kind Providence sent Preston S. Brooks to dispel the illusion.  It may be possible that even a brave man, in some moment of insane inconsistency, may commit some act which is the consummation of all cowardice; but it is utterly and absolutely impossible that any brave community should approve it.  Time has long since carried the perpetrator of that dastardly outrage to a higher tribunal, but nothing can ever redeem the State of his birth from the crowning shame of its indorsement.