Continuing its comments upon what it terms the "raving madness" of the North, the _Examiner_ says: "Then came the proclamation of Lincoln. Nothing but insanity could have dictated it; and without it the secession of Virginia was impossible. _Then their crazy attempt to subdue a country not less difficult to conquer than Russia itself, with an armed mob of loafers._"
In the contemplation of the pleasing sketch which its imagination had executed, the _Examiner_ asks: "_Spectators of these events, who can doubt that the Almighty fiat has gone forth against the American Union, or that the Southern Confederacy is decreed by the Divine Wisdom?_" It declares that the "dullest worldling, the coolest Atheist, the most hardened cynic, might be struck with awe by the startling and continued interposition of a power beyond the control or cognizance of men in these affairs;" and triumphantly asks: "Who thought, when the Trent was announced to sail, that on its deck, and in the trough of the weltering Atlantic, the key of the blockade would be lost?"
The natural and inevitable result of the assurances tendered to the people, was to lull the patriotic ardor which marked the first great uprising for defense, when two hundred thousand men sprung to arms. There can be no justice in holding the Confederate Government responsible for the popular apathy, which it had no agency in producing, or for the weakness of the armies, which, next to the naval weakness of the South, was the immediate cause of the disasters of the early months of 1862.
Since the commencement of hostilities, the Government had been indefatigable in its efforts to promote enlistments of _volunteers for the war_, instead of the twelve-months' system, which could be adequate for the demands of a temporary exigency only, and not for such a terrific struggle as must result from the temper and resources of the two contestants. Volunteering was as yet the only method of raising troops sanctioned by law, or likely to meet popular approval. The country was not yet prepared for an enforced levy of troops; and it is only necessary to remember the opposition, in certain quarters, to the execution of the subsequent conscription law, adopted under the pressure of disasters which made its necessity plain and inevitable, to conjecture the temper in which such a measure would have been met, in the over-confident and foolishly exultant tone of the press and public in the winter of 1861.