Staunton Spectator

The Yankee States having commenced the war against the South, having avowed the policy of coercion, and pledged themselves to punish "the rebels" and restore the Union, have taken upon themselves the onus of aggression. It is theirs to wage war, ours to resist; theirs to assail, ours to defend. We do not mean to say that we think it our true policy to remain on the defensive; we are not about to discuss that question but simply to remind the reader that the role of aggressive and invasive war is that which the Yankees have chosen for themselves, and that which they must continue, and succeed in, or stand before the world defeated. Having undertaken to overrun and subjugate the South, every day of inaction, every measure merely defensive, every retrograde movement, is something equivalent to defeat---is a confession that they have undertaken what they are not capable off accomplishing. Never did a people swagger more in the outset, or thunder more in the preparation, of hostilities than did they. Amid insolence and bombast and bravado, such as the world never saw, they raised, equipped and organized the "Grand Army" that was to quarter in the Capital of the Rebels by the 4th of July, at farthest. Another Grand Army was to descend the valley of the Mississippi and sweep everything before it. Huge fleets were to flock along the coast and open all the cotton ports to the world. Yankeedom, in fine, was to ravage unresisted and roar without reply. Such was the promise they held out to the astonished world, such the menace they fulmined over our devoted heads. Before this time, we were to have been severely chastised, and humbly suing for peace. The Confederate States, on the other hand, promised nothing, threatened nothing but simply asked to be "let alone." In their new relation, they disclaimed all hostile feeling or purpose, and tendered political amity and reciprocal commerce. When these were rejected and war denounced, they mustered for defence. They accepted the war as something not to be avoided, and to be resisted as long as it might be waged. This was their role. For them, merely to escape subjugation was victory. To hold the enemy at arm's length was triumph. These were the respective attitudes of the parties to the war at the beginning, and so they remain. Thus far the Yankee undertaking has been unmitigated and ignominious failure--while the undertaking of the Confederate States has been a glorious success. They have failed in everything of consequence they have attempted. We have succeeded in everything of consequence we have attempted. They undertook, first, to frighten us by bullyism, and failed. They undertook next, in the Sumter business, to over-reach us by fraud and trickery, and failed. Then they undertook to raise an army before whose ponderous battalions we would quail and succumb, and they failed. They undertook to surround us with the Anaconda folds of their vast army and compress us into submission, and they failed. They undertook by a blockade to deprive us of the necessaries of life and starve us into subjection, and they failed. They undertook to push their way into our dominions by the irresistible momentum of serried ranks and countless hosts, and failed. They undertook to win victories, and failed. They undertook to cut off all communication between us and foreign countries, and failed. They solicited sympathy and co-operation from European governments, and failed to obtain them. They sought to obtain the services of military leaders of note from abroad, and failed. They have failed in all these and other undertakings, and each of their failures has been our triumph. They have succeeded in putting chains upon helpless Maryland, but only for a time. Those fetters will be burst, and the star of the brave little Commonwealth will yet shine resplendent in the Southern heavens. They have succeeded in buying, at more than they were worth, a number of traitors in Northwestern Virginia, in Kentucky and Missouri. They have succeeded in throwing into their dungeons some true and good men, and a few undefended women. Beyond these things, they have succeeded in alienating forever the land which was the nursing mother of all their prosperity; in forfeiting the respect of other nations; in destroying their constitution and all the defences of liberty; in converting a free government into a despotism; in demonstrating that they are unworthy of freedom, because incapable of maintaining it; and in convincing the people by whom they desired most of all to be thought heroic and martial, that the "military is not their line." These are the results of the war, so far; and this is what we conceive to be "the situation." --Rich. Whig.