The Seventh Regiment
It turns out, after all, that the Seventh Regiment has marched, into
Virginia, and is part of the column which is destined to invade the Old Dominion.
All the protestations that it had only gone to
Washington to defend the
Capital were therefore false and hypocritical.
It was supposed that this regiment was composed of gentlemen, but their conduct proves that the difference between them and the
Wilson brigade is that they wear cleaner shirts and only swindle in the way of trade.
It is, moreover, a historical fact that the race of gentlemen disappeared from New York nearly a quarter of a century ago, when the old respectable quarter in the neighborhood of the
Battery gave place to warehouses, and the snobs and parvenus elbowed their way to the
West end head of the column.
The Seventh Regiment is entitled to be a martial regiment and to make a good deal of noise in the world; one half being trained to making charges, and the other being professional drummers.
If they can make the
South stand and deliver in a military way as successfully as they have in a financial, we may as well hollow ‘"enough"’ in advance.
It is difficult to imagine a more delightful trip than this invasion of
Virginia must be to the Seventh Regiment.
When they recollect the warm hearts that greeted them in
Richmond, and the hands that grasped their own with fraternal affection, they must be frantic with desire to lap our blood and lay our city in ashes!
Well, let them come!
We regard them as a type of the commercial
North, and an appropriate representative of a Government which has no other object than to compel the
South to remain tributary to Northern commerce.
Here are the very merchants who have sold us goods, exchanging their yardsticks for muskets, to compel us to continue our custom; and here the men who have broken the bread and drank the wine of
Virginia hospitality, coming to break the necks, if they can, of their, entertainers, and to redden the soil with the wine of
Virginia blood.
Oh, chivalric and noble Seventh Regiment!
If
Virginia ever allows you to return, she will deserve all the vials of humiliation you can pour upon her head.
