Columbia Democrat And Bloomsburg General Advertiser

The Policy of Peace.

Mr. Blair's mission to Richmond is undoubtedly an omen of good. Its specific purpose does not appear; but it, nevertheless, points generally to the dawn of returning reason. The gossip of Washington newsmongers we regard with contempt; but, on the broad facts of the case, we must conclude that Mr. Blair's visit to President Davis is but the initial step of a statesman-like policy. The approachments that may be expected to follow from it, whether or not they take form in actual negotiation, will lead, we hope earnestly, to some more intelligible course on the part of the Cabinet than that of the desperation of a blind and bloody fury.

The Southern people insist on separation, with terrible earnestness. Their domestic affections they have already sacrificed in pursuit of that purpose. They propose now to give up for its accomplishment an immense interest, that has found deep root in their political passions. The hates which their hearts have been inflamed by Federal atrocities, they stand determined to follow out, at even the cost of the sacrifice of the institution of slavery! If the President be capable of rising superior to the passions or the intrigues of faction, he must learn to deal with the relations of the sections with a correct appreciation of that astounding fact.

Slavery lies at the foundation of Southern society. That system of labor is intertwined in the Confederacy around all the rights of property. Prejudice and pride hedge it round about in the Southern soul. Attachment and duty have engrafted it in the Confederacy side by side with domestic affection. To pluck that system from their hearts, to tear it from the very base of their social organization, shows a terribleness of purpose at which even bloody fanaticism must stand aghast.

The South declares that she fights but for her freedom. The sincerity of that declaration, she proposes now to place under the proof of a sublime sacrifice. The republicanism which made her States free and independent, she vows between clenched teeth to preserve at the cost of not only her heart's blood, but by the sacrifice of deep passions of her soul. The fierce determination placed thus in proof, will undoubtedly satisfy mankind that the issue of the war henceforth is one involving the sacred right of self-government. The Abolitionist or the Democrat who in these States, continues henceforth to sustain the war, does so, therefore, in the full knowledge of the fact that the States of the South can never be brought back save only as conquered Provinces trailing at the heels of a despotic centralization.

Southern emancipation accomplishes a change in the struggle, materially. Slavery alone stands between the Confederates and the employment in the army of their black reserves. Two hundred thousand negroes, they are about to place immediately in camps of instruction. By next Summer these men will have become a formidable army. With these, and the white men that may be gathered up at the posts throughout the interior, the recruitment of the Southern armies will have more than counterbalanced all the reinforcements likely to be obtained from Mr. Lincoln's current call. Fighting behind breastworks for two months of such a campaign as that just ended, the economy of life in the Southern ranks will have placed them still further in the ascendancy. Early's march of last year into the Valley of the Shenandoah, teaches us that the work of decimation having been carried out upon Federal invasion, Lee will again throw off his spare troops, by ordering an army of negroes to water its horses, next Autumn, in the Potomac, or the Susquehannah.

Southern emancipation will not have expended its material consequences next year. The three millions of people made by that measure a basis of enlistments, will furnish an available force of about five hundred thousand men. Two hundred thousand of these placed in the field, and three hundred thousand held still in reserve, the resources of the South in men, from their black reserves alone, are seen to be enormous. Sixty or seventy thousand whites and blacks, of the Confederacy, pass annually into the military age; and constituting a constant element of recruitment almost equal in number to the casualties of a campaign, prove the supplies of soldiers at the South to be practically inexhaustible.

Confederate emancipation extends its significance to the cabinets of Europe. The pride and policy of France stand committed to the support of the Empire of Mexico. A triumphant consolidation at Washington would this, under the Monroe Doctrine, plunge Louis Napoleon into a bloody war. Dissolution of the Union, then, is a result to which he is, therefore, openly and deeply committed. As a political deduction, he has held it an accomplished fact. As a fundamental assumption of his policy in Mexico, he has placed the success of the South under the guaranty of his sword.

Louis Napoleon stands committed against a reconstruction of the Union on the evidence of actual events. Political inference, the man who would rise to the level of statesmanship, must learn to deal with as with existing fact. The overt act of France is not more conclusive of her policy in reference to the war of the sections than are the interests of that other great power, of those of England.

Whether on grounds of commercial aggrandizement, or of political power, no conclusion is plainer than that Great Britain is, to-day, biding her time to make good the dissolution of the Union if necessary, by her guns or her gold.

A hundred brains watch the struggle of the sections in its moral progress. Agents of France or of England, those intellects care very little for the fall of the Savannas, the Atlantas, the Wilmingtons. They know that the progress of conquest is not material but moral. Forts may be carried, cities occupied, fields laid waste; but the work of conquest begins and ends in the soul. Every pulsation of the popular purpose, those acute minds watch at both the North and at the South; and report regularly for the cold consideration of Lord Palmerston and Louis Napoleon.

These two great statesmen occupy, thus, a position to deal with the "American question" with their hands on the pulse of each section; and estimate its condition after the fashion of a physician with his ear to a stop-watch.

Southern emancipation will have swept an obstacle from the purposes of France and England. Popular sympathy and popular want follow, now, the heels of the policy of the Governments of those countries; and we may therefore expect, if the soul of the South should begin to sink, to find Napoleon and Palmerston apply their remedies to the then dangerous case of "the sick man" of the West.

What, then, will be the fate of the country, if we turn our backs on all offers of negotiation? Exhaustion in the meantime and foreign intervention in the end! Let us save from the wreck of our glories at least the pride of our Americanism. Immense interests, political prestige, and perhaps, in the end, even relations of renewed friendship, may be plucked from the ruin of our prosperity and greatness. Missions of peace, interchanges of sentiment, and generous concessions, we hail, therefore, with joy as the only means left us, now, for saving all that yet remains of our moral and material greatness from destruction by, in the first place, domestic war, and, in the end, foreign intervention.