Never Despair.
It is natural to the people of any particular locality that, when their own homes fall into possession of the enemy, they should begin to believe that their country is conquered.
There are, besides, despondent spirits everywhere, who, when the sun of good fortune sets, believe that it never will rise again, and commence filling the air with their owl-like lamentations.
Perhaps there were some such in
Winchester a short time ago, but how short has been the period of their subjection.
How grateful must be the reflections of its loyal people, who refused to take the oath of allegiance to despotism, and manifested, even in the presence of the enemy, a calm and dignified fidelity and firmness which their very adversaries must have secretly respected.
What a contrast to the conduct of some localities, in which the oath of allegiance has been taken — with a mental reservation probably — by a few persons of whom we expected better things.
If the people of
Winchester had thus faltered in their manhood and honor, would they not have blushed to behold again the
Confederate banner, and to look the honest hero.
Jackson, in the face?
A town, a State, or a county may fall into the occupation of an enemy, and fall again and again, and yet the day of its ultimate and permanent deliverance be seen.
Taking a city and keeping it are two different things.
New York was in the occupancy of the
British for six years of the Revolution.
But its inhabitants maintained their loyalty to the
Republic unshaken to the end. We can scarcely expect that Southern men will be less true to their country, less ready to endure privations and sufferings than the people of the
North.
To dream of subjugating the
Southern States by capturing Southern cities, is a delusion which we cannot dispel from the
Northern minds, but which should not be permitted to possess our own imaginations.
Ditching and entrenching is a slow process for conquering such a large portion of this continent as the Southern Confederacy.
New Orleans has fallen, with 200,000 inhabitants, half a dozen other towns, with fifty thousand more; if
Richmond and every other town in
Virginia should fall, that would not involve in all a population of eighty thousand.
All the
Southern cities together do not contain a population of half a million; and if every one of them were taken, they would scarcely be missed from the body politic more than a wart from the human body.
Not only the population, but the wealth and strength of the
South, physical and intellectual, are in the country, which has always been its private mode of life.
This vast country, which can supply its own wants of every kind by its own industry, can never be conquered.
Its little towns, the largest of which would hardly make a suburb of the great cities of the world, may be occupied for a time, but the country will remain its own master, and in the end secure their ultimate deliverance.
