Friday, February 9, 2024

R. L. Dabney on the Belief in the North that there would be no major Civil War before 1861

  

It maybe well to recall to memory the boastful spirit and arrogant self- confidence, with which the North entered upon the struggle with the South. The Tribune said: " The hanging of traitors is sure to begin before the month is over. The nations of Europe may rest assured that Jeff. Davis & Co. will be swinging from the battlements of Washington, at least by the 4th of July. We spit upon a later and longer deferred justice." The New York Times said: " Let us make quick work. The ' rebellion, ' as some people designate it, is an unborn tadpole. Let us not fall into the delusion of mistaking a ' local commotion, ' for a revolution. A strong active ' pull together ' will do our work effectually in thirty days." The Philadelphia Press declared that " no man of sense could, for a moment, doubt that this much-ado- about- nothing would end in a month." The Northern people were " simply invincible." "The rebels, a mere band of ragamuffins, will fly, like chaff before the wind, on our approach.” But who can wonder that the press of America should pander thus to the ignorance and the arrogance of the North, when Seward himself, just a month before the Battle of Manassas, wrote thus in a public document, addressed to Mr. Dayton, the Minister at the French Court : "France seems to have mistaken a mere casual and ephemeral insurrection here, such as is incidental in the experience of all nations, for a war, which has flagrantly separated this nation into two co- existing political powers, who are contending in arms against each other, after the separation." And again: "It is erroneous to suppose that any war exists in the United States. Certainly there cannot be two belligerent powers, where there is no war." Read in the light of subsequent events, can anything appear more grotesque, more contemptible? (R. L. Dabney, Life and Campaigns of Lieut. Gen.  Thomas J. Jackson [New York: Blelock & Co., 1866], 210)

 

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