was their conduct.  The Rebels were at least as sensitive on the subject of their military character as they were on that of slavery; and yet, while we could not be sufficiently servile on the latter subject, we acted most offensively on the former.  We asserted, in every form and variety of language, our ability to “put them down;” and but for the circumstance that not the slightest atom of ability marked the management of our military affairs, we should have made our boasting good.  Men who could not say enough to satisfy themselves on the point of the right of the chivalrous Southrons to create, breed, work, and sell slaves, were equally loud-mouthed in their expressed purpose to “put down” the said Southrons because they had rebelled, and rebelled only because they were slaveholders, and for the purpose of placing slavery beyond the reach of wordy assault in the country of which it should be the governing power.  There has been much complaint that foreigners have not understood the nature of our quarrel, and that the general European hostility to the American national cause is owing to their ignorance of American affairs.  How that may be we shall not stop to inquire; but it is beyond dispute that no European community has ever displayed a more glaring ignorance of the character of the contest here waged than was exhibited by most Americans in the early months of that contest, and down to a recent period.  The war was treated by nearly the whole people as if slavery had no possible connection with it, and as if all mention of slavery in matters pertaining to the war were necessarily an impertinence, a foreign subject lugged into a domestic discussion.  Three-fourths of the people were disposed querulously to ask why Abolitionists couldn’t let slavery alone in war-time.  It was a bad thing, was Abolitionism, in time of peace; but its badness was vastly increased when we had war upon our hands.  Half the other fourth of the citizens were disposed to agree with the majority, but very shame kept them silent.  It was only the few who had a proper conception of the state of things, and they had little influence with the people, and, consequently, none with Government.  Had they said much, or attempted to do anything, probably they would have found Federal arms directed against themselves with much more of force and effectiveness in their use than were manifested when they were directed against the Rebels.  When a Union general could announce that he would make use of the Northern soldiers under his command to destroy slaves who should be so audacious as to rebel against Rebels, and the announcement was received with rapturous approval at the North, it was enough to convince every intelligent and reflecting man that no just idea of the struggle we were engaged in was common, and that a blind people were following blind leaders into the ditch,—­even into that “last ditch” to which the Secessionists have so often been doomed, but in which they so obstinately continue to refuse to find their own and their cause’s grave.