Northern retaliation.
The kind-hearted and courteous Northern Government is quite out of temper about
Fort Pillow, and
Mr. Lincoln threatens to retaliate horribly if he finds that his subjects —
white or
black — were put to the sword by
General Forrest after he captured the fort.
It is, circumstanced and situated as we are, decidedly amusing to observe the holy horror which is excited in the breast of the representative man of Northern coarseness and brutality by the alleged massacre at
Fort Pillow.
A volume could not hold a simple recital of the most atrocious and bloody deeds perpetrated by
Lincoln's hordes of mercenaries and cut-throats upon our people, both soldiers and unoffending and defenceless and helpless citizens.
Early in the war we have the murder of ten most resectable citizens of
Missouri by the
Federal General McNeal, because a traitor to the
South, who had enlisted in the
Federal army, was missing, and that traitor appeared after the executions had taken place.
Then there was the hanging of
Mumford; the shooting of Kentuckians in the service of the
Confederacy by
Burnside; the driving of helpless women and children into the
Confederate lines without the means of subsistence, after robbing them of all their earthly possessions; the insulting and outraging of women; the cold- blooded murder of Southern planters, down to that of the killing of a highly respectable and venerable citizen of
Mississippi, beaten to death the other day by negro slaves enlisted by the
Yankees to increase the barbarism and terrors of the war; and the still later brutalities of these same black soldiers in Narsemond county, in this State.
These, with the thousands of other horrible deeds, which are worthy the worst of demons, not to speak of the Dahlgren scheme to burn and sack
Richmond and massacre her people, have been perpetrated by the
Yankee hordes with the approbation of their Government.
No word of censure for any of the brutalities of the
Yankee armies has ever been uttered by that Government; no word of regret or remonstrance has been uttered by the
Northern communities who have grown rich on the commerce and the products of Southern toil.
Even such sentimentalists as
Everett, and even the gentler sex, living in luxury and such elegance as pleases the
Yankee taste, contemplate the excesses of the
Yankee soldiery with satisfaction, or, at best, passive coldness.
This interminable catalogue of inhumanities include many that demanded retaliation, and our Government omitted a right — may we not say a duty?--in not meting out to the bloody hell hounds who perpetrated them blood for blood and life for life.
Now, supposing the assertion true in every particular, one of our officers avails himself of a rule of civilized warfare and puts to the word a part of a garrison which had, with no hope of successful resistance, refused to surrender after repeated summoning, and occasioned a sacrifice of life in the storming of their defences.
This measure, by which a wholesome lesson and example was given that may save the effusion of blood hereafter, has elicited the threatening of the aforesaid chief of the
Federal despotism.
Well, lot him do his worst.
The South has no fears.
The Northern Government has essayed worse calamities for the
South than even its threatened retaliation.
It has tried insurrections and even famine.
Yet the
South is stronger and more resolute than over.
Should
Lincoln retaliate it will only force us to do what we had long since a right to do, and inaugurate a series of retaliations which do not at present promise to us the chief suffering.
So let the
Yankees "imbrue" as soon as they please.
The South has a long unsettled account that will surely be presented whenever the work is begun.
