Special to the New Orleans Crescent

Washington, February 22, 1861

The “natal day” has been celebrated here in grand style. People from the adjoining cities and counties gathered here by thousands, more to witness the parade of the small federal army than anything else. This came off about 3 o’clock P. M. on Pennsylvania Avenue. The troops posted themselves opposite the Center Market, near Seventh street, and made an imposing display with their cannon and horses. Suddenly the bugle sounded a charge, and away the cavalry and howitzers dashed up towards the President’s House, making a great noise, kicking up a mighty dust, but eliciting no cheers. The populace was too scared for that. All feel as if war must come, and that a military despotism is inevitable. Out of some thousand citizen soldiery (including the militia) only one company refused to join in the celebration. The National Rifles turned out, but took no part in the general procession. The men who compose this company, by far the best drilled in the city, are Southern, and do not intend to light for Marse Abe. Lincoln’s speeches at Trenton and Philadelphia leave little room to hope that he will not practice coercion. “It may he necessary to set the foot down firm.” And the New Jerseymen, the truest of all the Northerners to the South, applauded loudly and long. He is willing to live and die by the “indiscreet things” he uttered at Indianapolis, and would “rather be assassinated—even shot“—notice the anti-climax ! ” than abandon the principles which gave liberty to all the world”—negroes not excepted, of course.

That villainous sheet, the Washington Star, thinks that Arkansas has initiated the counter revolution in the Confederate States, and the States and Union quotes a recent Union-shrieking article, letter or item, which appeared in the Picayune of your city, the tendency of which is to confirm Lincoln in his coercive policy. Nothing would please the fanatics of the North more than to see Southerners cutting each other’s throats for the sake of getting back into this glorious Union.