April 8, 1861; The New York Herald
Secresy is only the defence of the weak, and is always calculated to arouse suspicion. It is, therefore, a bad sign when we find the administration of this country hiding its designs, as the ostrich hides his head, in the face of proceedings that are the theme of universal comment and anxious speculation from Florida to Maine. We find the government chartering and despatching transports laden with troops and stores, and equipping the entire naval force at its command with the utmost haste, and without letting the public know the purpose or destination for which they are intended. Meanwhile rumor is busy on the wing, and we are left to conjecture. Some say the vessels are bound for Pensacola, which is probable; others that they are for Texas, in order to carry on the war against the Indians that are making hostile demonstrations on the borders; while many surmise any and everything, probable and improbable, from active interference with Spain at San Domingo to the reinforcement of Fort Sumter.
To the ominous and painful uncertainly occasioned by these warlike movements, we have added an increased distrust of the administration, consequent on the surmise that there is trouble, almost amounting to a split, in the Cabinet. It is evident that the war section of that august body has triumphed over the peace section. What, therefore, are we to expect? The administration, by working only in the dark, has evidently no definite policy to proclaim, and is weak and uncertain in its movements. Now, let us ask in what good can all this secresy result, and what necessity is there for maintaining it? There is no necessity for or utility in it whatever. It is only blinding the people, while the country is drifting to ruin, and while civil war with all its attendant horrors is being wilfully inaugurated. Look at the immense harm the condition of things is producing in financial and commercial circles; for, of course, according to the acts of the administration, direct or mysterious, stocks in Wall street rise or fall, and just now, as a consequence, we find the heart of the money market very irregular indeed in its pulsations.
From present appearances we know what we may expect in the future. We see that all the professions of peace uttered by Mr. Lincoln and others were mere idle talk, or else made to lull the country into a state of false security till the administration concluded its loans and was ready to strike a blow. Fort Pickens, on its lonely sandbar, may, in its ruins in years hereafter, tell of the bloody battle of Pensacola which commenced the civil war that desolated the United States in the year of our Lord 1861. Our fervent prayer is that it may not, and that those enemies of their country who cry for blood may be disappointed. But of this there seems now to be little hope.