The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I | Page 7

the result of a long-prepared traitorous conspiracy in
the interest of the rebels. The enforcement of the draft against mob
violence instigated by treason, was indispensable not only to the
successful prosecution of the war against the rebels of the South, but to
the maintenance of the supreme authority and power of the National
Government, and of the foundations of social order at the North. Not to
have enforced it might have insured the triumph of the rebellion and the
independence of the South; it certainly would have rendered the North
no longer a country fit for any decent man to live in. Such and so great
was the significance of the crisis. The responsibility of the
Administration was immense. The President met it nobly. He took care
that a sufficient military force--not under the control of Governor
Seymour, but of a well-tried patriot--was present in New York. He
carried out the draft there and everywhere else. He crushed the schemes
and hopes of the traitorous conspirators--more guilty than the rebels in
arms-and gave a demonstration of the strength of the National
Government, as grand in its majesty as it was indispensable to the
national salvation in this crisis and to its security in all future time. The
Government has triumphed in the quiet majesty of its irresistible force
over factious and traitorous opposition at the North, springing from
treasonable sympathy with the rebels, or, from what, in a crisis like this,
is equally wicked, the selfishness of party spirit, preferring party to
country. More than this, it has triumphed over the dangerous and
destructive notions on State sovereignty, which traitors and partisans
have dared invoke. It is impossible to overestimate the importance for
the present and for the future of this victorious assertion of the

supremacy of the National Government.
SUMMARY REVIEW.
In a review, then, of this gigantic struggle, we have every reason to be
content and confident--no reason to bate one jot of heart or hope. The
triumph over Northern treason, achieved by the force of the
Government, has been followed by a moral triumph at the polls, no less
grand in its significance. The country is not oppressed by the
stupendous expenses of the war. The money is all spent at home. It
stimulates the productive industry of the country, and the nation is all
the time growing rich. The rebels have been disastrously repulsed in
two attempts at invasion, and do not hold one inch of Northern soil.
One third of the States claimed by them at the outset, are gone from
them forever: Maryland, Missouri, Kentucky, are securely in the Union;
Virginia we have cut in two--nearly one half of its territory, by the will
of its inhabitants, now constituting a loyal member of the Union as the
new State of West Virginia--while of its eastern half we securely hold
its coast, harbors, and fortresses, and a considerable number of its
counties. Tennessee is ours, and cannot, we think, be wrenched away.
We have New Orleans, and the uncontrolled possession of the
Mississippi river--cutting the territory of the rebels in two, destroying
their communications, and giving us a considerable portion of the
States bordering that river. In North Carolina and South Carolina we
have a hold, from which it will be hard to drive us. On the Atlantic and
Gulf coast nearly every fortress is in our possession; there is not a port
which is not possessed by us, or else so blockaded that (except in the
peculiar case of Wilmington) it is a hazardous affair for any vessel to
attempt going in or coming out; and the rebels are utterly unable to
raise the blockade of a single port. In fine, they have lost more than one
third of their territory forever, and of the remaining portion there is not
one considerable subdivision over which in some part the flag of the
Union does not securely wave. What title to recognition as an
independent power can the Confederate rebels present to the neutral
powers of the world?

SKETCHES OF AMERICAN LIFE AND SCENERY.
While American tourists are delightedly visiting and minutely
describing the most hidden recesses of beauty among the mountains,
plains, seas, lakes, and rivers of Europe, there are, close within their
reach, innumerable spots well worthy of consideration, and hitherto
entirely unknown to the great mass of pleasure and scenery seeking
travellers. These fair but hidden gems have become of the more
importance that the grand struggle convulsing our country has rendered
foreign travel difficult, even when advisable, and has roused within our
people a love for their own land, a pride in its loveliness, much more
rarely felt before the attempt to dismember and ruin it had awakened
dormant patriotism and completed the severance between the recent
province and the historically renowned