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APPREHENSIONS OF AN ATTACK ON WASHINGTON. – Now that war is fairly begun in South Carolina, Mr. Lincoln and his Cabinet are alarmed about the danger of an assault upon Washington, as Mr. Walker, the Secretary of War at Montgomery, is reported to have said that the Southern confederacy would be in possession of the Capitol before the 1st of May, and as President Davis has called for twenty-five thousand men, whose destination is supposed to be Washington. The requisition for troops made by Mr. Lincoln on the Governor of Pennsylvania shows that his fears have been roused.
As yet there has been but little damage done at Charleston, almost as little loss of life as in a battle in Mexico or Peru. But before the war is ended many lives will be sacrificed, and blood will flow as copiously as it did in the civil wars in England. The bloody scene will be chiefly in and around Washington. That will be the debateable ground, for possession of the seat of government; and while President Davis will send an army to drive President Lincoln out of it, the latter will call upon the North for help. Virginia will probably secede immediately, without waiting to go through forms, and will unite her arms with those of the Confederate States. Other border slave States will probably mingle in the strife on the same side. Lincoln, in distress, will summon to his aid the militia of Ohio, New York, Illinois, and other republican States of the Northwest, as he has already called on the State of Pennsylvania.
The fighting, therefore, will be of the most terrible description – close; and hand to hand, with rifle and musket and sword and bayonet; not with cannon, at long range, by which “nobody is hurt.” Both armies will be of the same race, will have equal pluck, and contend not only with their ordinary fierceness, but with the additional fury which consanguinity ever lends to the battle of brothers.
