avoided, how powers might have been more successfully employed and
greater results achieved. But the American Executive is surrounded with
difficulties too little appreciated by the public, while an almost
merciless criticism, emanating both from injudicious friends and
vigilant foes, follows his every action. Criticism should not be
relaxed; but it should be exercised by those only who are competent to
undertake its office. The perusal of the morning paper does not
ordinarily put us in possession of sufficient information to enable us
to understand, in all their bearings, the measures of the Government.
Something more is required than a reading of the accounts of battles
furnished by the correspondents of the press to entitle one to express
an opinion on military movements. It should not be forgotten that the
officers engaged in the army of the United States are better judges of
military affairs than civilians at home; that the proceedings of the
Government, with rare exceptions, possibly, are based upon a fuller
knowledge of all the facts relating to a special case, than is obtained
by private persons, and that its judgment is therefore more likely to be
correct, in any given instance, than our own. The injury done to the
national cause by the persistent animadversion of well-intentioned men,
who cannot conceive that their judgments may perchance be incorrect, is
scarcely less, than the openly hostile invective of the friends of the
South. The intelligent citizens of the North, especially those who
occupy prominent positions as teachers and instructors of the people
through the press, the pulpit, and other avenues, should ever be mindful
that the _political_ liberty which they possess of free thought and free
speech, has imposed upon them the moral duty of using this wisely for
the welfare of humanity, and that they cannot be faithless to this
obligation without injuring their fellow men and incurring a heavy moral
guilt.