But there are other symptoms of disloyalty besides this persistent demand for peace.  There are indications of a desire to array sections of the North against each other, and—­Heaven save the mark!—­by the very politicians who have been most bitter in their denunciation of “geographical parties.”  Here comes a little Western lawyer, with unlimited resources of slang and slender capital of ideas, barely redeemed from being an absolute blackguard by the humanizing influences of a New England college, but showing fewer and fewer symptoms of civilization as he forgets the lessons of his collegiate life; and he delights an audience of New York “roughs,” adopted citizens of Celtic extraction, and lager-loving Germans, (do not cocks always crow longest and loudest on a dung-hill?) by the novel information, that “Puritanism is a reptile” and the cause of all our troubles, and that we shall never fulfil our national destiny until Puritanism has been crushed.  Let us not elevate this nauseating nonsense into importance by attempting a reply.  Such men must be left to follow out their inevitable instincts.  They are not worth the trouble necessary to civilize them.  Mr. Rarey succeeded in taming a zebra from the London Zooelogical Gardens; but a single lesson could not permanently reclaim the beast, and it soon relapsed into its native and normal ferocity.  One experiment sufficed to show the power of the artist; no possible increase of value in the educated animal would have justified a prolonged and perfect training.

You ask if we have gained any advantages commensurate with our efforts, or with the high-sounding phrase of our declared purpose.  Let us look at this a moment.  Suppose we begin with a glance at the other side of the picture.  Has all the boasting, have all the promises, been on the Federal side?  Did we hear nothing of the Confederate flag floating over Faneuil Hall?—­nothing of Washington falling into the hands of the enemy?—­nothing of a festive winter in Philadelphia and a general distribution of spoils in New York?—­nothing of foreign intervention?—­nothing of the cowardice of Northern Mudsills and the omnipotence of King Cotton?  Decidedly, the Rebels began with a sufficiently startling programme.  Let us see how far they have carried it out.  As they were clearly the assailants, we have an undoubted right to ask what they have accomplished aggressively.  We say, then, that, excepting in the case of one brief raid, the soil of a single Free State has never been polluted by the hostile tread of an invading force; that every battle-field has been within the limits of States claimed as Confederate; that, while the war has desolated whole States represented in the Confederate Congress, not an acre north of Mason and Dixon’s line has suffered from the ravages of the Rebel armies.  Was ever another scorpion more completely surrounded and shut in by a cordon of fire?

This is surely something, but it is by no means all.  Have we accomplished nothing aggressively?  We will call into court a witness from the enemy’s camp.  Hear the recent testimony of a leading journal, published in the Confederate capital:[A]—­