Retaliation.
--While our authorities have dealt with Yankee prisoners in a spirit of humanity, and in accordance with the usages of civilized warfare, loyal Southern citizens who have had the misfortune of falling into the hands of the
Northern barbarians, have been treated with a refined cruelty that recalls the memory of savage Indian barbarities.--The crew of the ‘"
Savannah,"’ bound hand and foot, have been incarcerated in the cells of the
New York Tombs, in fœtid chambers previously occupied by robbers, highwaymen, murderers, pirates, and the general scum of Yankee vagabondism.
But a few days since, the Police
Commissioners of
Baltimore have been removed from
Fort McHenry, where they had been imprisoned without cause and without law, to occupy similar apartments with thieves and pickpockets, in New York prison-houses.
The
Venetian ‘"Council of Ten,"’ In the darker days of its diabolical power, would not have dared to have done worse.
Now, we are free from finding fault with those placed above us, high in authority.
We have, on the contrary, the most unbounded and unqualified reliance in the wisdom, patriotism and official efficiency in every officer of the Confederate Government, from the distinguished head thereof down to the lowest clerk in its employment.
But they cannot see every thing — cannot do all things — cannot be omnipresent as regards all thoughts.
And, hence, we earnestly represent that it is full time to act for the future with the
Yankee Government in a spirit of unmistakable Retaliation.
It is said that a sinning member of a sinning family was once bitten by a rattlesnake in
Ohio.
When the poison of the reptile rankled in the previously obdurate creature's blood, his heart dilated with religious reverence, and he sent for a minister to pray over him. The latter, being a most Divine pathologist, understood his patient thoroughly, and prayed: ‘"Oh!
Lord, we thank thee for rattle snakes.
We thank thee for the rattlesnake which bit
Henry.
And, oh,
Lord!
we pray thee, send a rattlesnake to bite Jim, and another to bite John; and, in the fulness of thy mercy, neglect not to send the biggest kind of a rattlesnake to bite the old man: for nothing but rattlesnakes will ever bring the Snooks family to repentance."’
We believe that this prayer was at once soundly theological and unexceptionably philosophical.
And so we believe that nothing short of unequivocal retaliation will ever bring our Yankee enemy to abandon his outrageous barbarity and cruelty, and to recognize the code of civilized warfare, but the payment of him off in his own coin — with compound interest.
We have confined in
Richmond now, several hundred of the enemy's prisoners; amongst them ‘"
Colonels"’ and members of ‘"Congress."’ They feast sumptuously daily upon the fat of the land.
Some of them deport themselves with an air of impudent arrogance which was wholly foreign to them upon the field of battle.
We are told that they have hired messengers to wait upon them.
They send for and drink whiskey gaily as if they were the
free schoolmen of old
Epicurus.
Meantime our friends pine in the dungeons of the
North; bound like malefactors, insulted by vulgar jailors and turnkeys, and within hearing of the depraved blasphemies of every species of congregated villainy.
We demand, then, in their name, ‘"an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth."’ Let seven of these fellows, for each one, be sent down South, and confined in the cells of the Fortresses of
South Carolina,
Alabama, and
Louisiana, as hostages for the proper treatment of Southern gentlemen, now maltreated in the charnel houses of the
North.
We want to hear of no more squeamishness, leniency, or humanity.
When we have to fight barbarians, you must deal with them as such; otherwise, you will be the victim.
