Sacramento Daily Record Union

It is a late day indeed to find such expression as this in a newspaper of the times. The Richmond (Va.) Dispatch says:

There never was a greater blunder committed than Mr. Lincoln committed under the advice of bad counselors when he began war upon the South. If he had allowed free institutions to have a trial—if he had let the Southern States alone—the Union feeling was so strong in all of them that public opinion would in a few years have compelled the few seceded "erring sisters" to return to their allegiance to the Union.

The Dispatch fails to see, or will not see, that the "let alone" policy would have been an admission of the dissolubility of the Union; a confession that it is but a rope of sand; a concession to the claimants holding that it was but the result of a temporary compact, severable at the will of either party. Had Mr. Lincoln consented to insurrection and the seizure of Federal property and its conversion to the purposes of the revolutionists, he would have stood before the world condemned as perjured under his oath of office. He was bound to enforce the laws, and had no power to suspend them and permit rebelling States to seize upon the national goods and convert them. We have but the "idea" of the Dispatch that the erring sisters would have seen the error of their ways and have sued for leave to return. The evidences were, and still are, that had the Confederacy been once established, it would have remained a separate and we doubt not an antagonistic power. Such talk as our contemporary indulges in at this late day is simply an exhibition of ignorance of the forces that impel men and give momentum to States.