"a Christian and Humane People."
--In his late verbose dispatch to Lord Lyons,
Mr. Seward speaks of the
United States as a ‘"Christian and humane people."’ After this declaration, it is useless for this miracle of mendacity to essay any further flight of imagination.
He cannot transcend this stupendous and undacious lie by any future achievement in his peculiar line.
He should now be content to rest on his laurels, for he has reached the top of that
Alps of falsehoods which constitute his life, and which leave him no equal in mendacity on
terra firma, and but one in the lake of fire and brimstone.
The
United States, in its best days, never was and never professed to be a ‘"Christian people."’ It never, as a nation, recognized the truth of the
Christian religion.
That it had within its borders at one period a large number of Christian people we do not deny.
But the nation, as such, never acknowledged Christianity, and in the
North, Christianity, even among those who professed it, has given place, in great measure, to a besotted fanaticism which has swept like a desolating Sirocco over the land.
With the exception of a comparatively small minority, who have never bowed the knee to Baal, the mass of the
Northern population is openly infidel, or puritanical, or
Unitarian, or Spiritualists.
Of late years the
Christian Associations have represented the large majority of the popular religionists of the
North, and of all the bloody-minded brigands of this war they have shown the least of the spirit and principles of Christianity.
We have had in our own possession a letter envelope of one of those associations, in which the
Southern President is represented as hanging from a gallows, guarded by a squad of blackguard Zouaves, and a letter breathing a ferocity and vengeance which had their inspirations in any source but the merciful and forgiving genius of Christianity.
Rev. Dr. Tyng's address in which he declared that the thieves and cut throats of
Wilson's regiment might have their souls saved by their bloody raid into the
South, and
Dr. Breckinridge's savage war-whoop for the blood of women and children were fine illustrations of
Mr. Seward's ‘"Christian people."’
The ‘"humanity"’ is about on a par with the ‘"Christianity"’ of the
North.
We wonder that even
Seward himself did not blush to attribute to his countrymen such a characteristic.
The history of modern civilization does not present a picture of such deliberate barbarity and brutality as this Northern war upon the
South.
The scenes in the
North by which it was preceded, made the whole civilized world thrill with horror.
Rapine and murder were deliberately proclaimed as the only mode of warfare to be recognized by this ‘"Christian and humane people."’ ‘"Booty and Beauty"’ were openly flaunted upon banners borne through their streets in the broad light of noonday.
Their brutal soldiers declared on their way to Washing on that they did not mean to leave a single hearthstone in the
South undefiled.--Their women exhorted them as they left to bring back each the head of a Southern man, and their letter bags opened at
Manassas contained wholesale invocations to rapine which causes the blood to curdle.
Their Grand Army brought with them handcuffs and halters to illustrate their ‘"humanity."’ Not one usage or law of civilized warfare have they respected.
Women have been ravished, houses burned, farms desolated, Bastiles crowded with peaceful citizens torn from their homes, and our gallant privateers condemned to a felon's death.
Women and children have been shot down in cold blood, universal robbery of Southern property legalized, and the torch of insurrection, kindling the flames of hell upon earth, they are seeking to light throughout the whole length and breadth of the land.
All
Europe has stood aghast at the fiendish ferocity of this ‘"Christian and humane people."’ If they could succeed in their present crusade, such scenes of horror would be witnessed as might well make even Goths and Vandals shudder.
We ask again, has not
Seward capped the climax even of his audacious mendacity when he calls such a people ‘"Christian and humane?"’
