TOP/CS OF THE DAY.
THE FALL OF NEW ORLEANS.
THE fall of New Orleans is the heaviest blow- which the South has yet sustained, as injurious from the manner of capture as from the value of the city itself.. The latter, however, is, we believe, immensely underrated in England, where the public are deceived by a defective analogy. These coast cities, it is said, are not the South, and the coast expe- ditions, however troublesome, are, after all, but skin wounds. The Southerners have only to retreat into their interior, and the invaders are left in helpless possession of posts which lead nowhere, yet demand an excessive outlay. That is true as regards some of the positions occupied, the sea islands outside North Carolina, and even, we fear, Fort Monroe, but it is not correct of New Orleans. A wound there injures an artery, for the capture of the city carries with it the command of the navigation of the Mississippi. The Con- federate fleet is enclosed between Pittsburg and the sea, and Memphis once taken, the mighty river ceases to be a Southern highway. The Federal gunboats and steamers become as useful as an impregnable line of rails, while four rebel States are rendered accessible at any time, and in almost any direction, and may be assailed by Federal armies almost without a warning. No• amount of success can ever make the South the masters of the sea, and the masters of the sea, with New Orleans theirs, are masters also of the most exposed Southern frontier, and can strike at one and the same time on the East and the West.
That position may not, and does not, amount to immediate victory. The South may, if it pleases, fall back on its swamps, and maintain a guerilla war, or even an organized campaign, as long as it can find men and powder. But it does carry these two most important results. The South has from the first asserted that its States formed a great Re- public, a nation entitled to stand alone, able to hold its place in the world, and entitled, on political as well as moral grounds, to assert its independence. With the loss of the Mississippi, much of this claim disappears. Masters of that river, the North can at any moment strike its rival close to the heart, can in extreme circumstances compel it to keep the peace, to modify its foreign relations,, even, perhaps, to restrain its internal and local action. The Confederacy is as vulnerable as we should be were Ireland a province of France. France can strike at one frontier now, and it needs no strategy to perceive what our position would be were Napo- leon able to launch a force at once upon Kent and Anglesey. The moral claim of the South, if it has any, is of course un- touched, but the political claim is diminished, and the pro- bable chances of the struggle are most seriously affected., The effect, as we said, is increased by the• manner of capture. Had New Orleans fallen before an army the seizure would have had: but little political meaning. A stronger army might regain what a weak one had been forced to abandon. But New Orleans was captured from the sea by a force against which• a French marshal in command of the Imperial Guard would have been as powerless as General Lovell with only his raw recruits. No power, except gunboats, could protect a city threatened by gilboats, riding on. waters which rise tar above the city level, and able to; home bard; as it were without receiving a shot. New Orleans belongs to the biggest fleet, and on the ocean the South can never contend with its Northern. rival.
Again, suppose the contest too protracted for Northern endurance, and terms of peace• proposed. The Western States cannot give up the Mississippi, already in their own hands. We question if they could in any case without poli- tical extinction, for even the St. Lawrence cannot compensate for an outlet in which the seasons involve no change. But they certainly will not with the river once more in their bands, and any conceivable terms, therefore, must involve For the South the surrender of all the territory west of the Mississippi, and with it of every hope of profitable or boundless extension. The dream of empire is over, and such a dream has had as much power over Southern imaginations as the safety of their peculiar institution. The blow is a heavy discouragement, heavy enough to make the Confederates doubt whether, under any circumstances, the victory can be theirs. They may, of course, have reached the temper in whichenen can never be beaten, and they will unquestionably wait for the result of Beauregard's. move- ments and General• McClellan's advance. But Memphis and Rliehmond once lost—and theehances of the North are at least as good as those of the South, the Carolinian fearing fever perhaps more than the man of Massachusetts ;—the loss of New Orleans will greatly increase the tendency to submit. They can seem earnest to the last, for the North will always- receive them back with an only too ready forgiveness. Whether the capture will enable the Federal Government, to raise the blockade may reasonably be doubted. If it did that would be another blow to the Confederates, as reducing the chance of European intervention. But the Federals will still be obliged to prevent unlimited communication, to regu- late imports very carefully, and to refuse to men who have- not submitted, the privilege of free trade. Even, therefore,. if the Confederates were willing to sell their cotton, export: except by the few growers near the river who have submitted would be surrounded with difficulties, and there is no proof as yet that the Confederates will sell a bale. They rely still, though with fainter hearts, on Europe breaking-the blockade, and will do nothing which might supersede the necessity for- intervention. England, we fear,. must consent to endure till, the South has learned to accept the truth of its own position... :
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