The poor deluded negroes — deluded by the unscrupulous and brutal Yankees with cunning lies and bad whiskey — entered the breach in the
Confederate works near
Petersburg, on Saturday, with the cry of "Remember
Fort Pillow!
No quarter!" To reasonable and reflecting minds, the scene and the circumstances afford abundant cause of the most unutterable disgust for the
Yankee character; utterly destitute, as it is, of every sentiment of honor or humanity.
With the odds of three or four to one against the
South--with the world open to them for material of war, while it is shut to us — with the advantage of filling its ranks by forman enlistments — and with the advantage of a navy and an immense power of iron- clads, which has thrown into their hands all the navigable water of the
South--with all these, the
Yankees have, besides, enlisted the slaves of the
South to fight against their masters; and they endeavor to fill the hearts of these confiding poor creatures with vindictive rage and thirst for revenge against their people, their masters, who have ever treated them with kindness and humanity.
Now, they do this by the most extravagant falsehoods concerning the conduct of our men, under
Forrest, at
Fort Pillow.
Thus exciting those ill-fated blacks (whom they have robbed of homes such as they never can give them,) with imaginary wrongs and outrages, and making them drunk with liquor, they hound them on to the attack of the
Southern soldiers — to attack the men commanded by
Robert E. Lee, the soldier without reproach, and the
Christian gentleman without stain and without dishonor.
In the whole history of this war not one act of unnecessary harshness even can be charged to this peerless commander.--His humanity is overflowing, and his desire to spare the effusion of blood has lost him many advantages which he permitted, for that sentiment, unavailed to pass by. He governs an army of heroes — a braver or more chivalrous body of men were never ranged in line of battle.
Against such a chieftain and such high-spirited veterans these unprincipled and heartless Yankees send forward their black regiments with the savage cry of "Remember
Fort Pillow!
No quarter!" What a debased race it must be that can bring itself to this degraded and barbarous device for adding horrors to the war waged against the
South--so much its inferior in numbers and resources of war!
The trick of inflaming the negro mind by the false representations of the scenes at
Fort Pillow--where our army did nothing out of the course of honorable warfare, and nothing, indeed, which it was not obliged to do — shows the true purpose of the
Yankee in introducing the negro into the war. It was to increase the horrors of the strife, and thereby spread dismay, if possible, throughout the
South.
In order to succeed in this object, it was necessary that his mind should be inflamed and his most vindictive feelings aroused against his own people.
Every art and appliance with this view have been employed.
The story of
Fort Pillow is but a sample of the means used to irritate and stimulate him. With such, the cold-blooded and fiendish Yankee hoped to incite to indiscriminate slaughter, and illumine the
Southern skies with incendiary fires that were to leave a desolate land, where there would be neither shelter nor food for any one!
It is not the will of
Providence that such wicked and inhuman purposes should be accomplished.
The brave
South has stood firm against the plundering armies and hellish agents of the enemy, and, with the favor of Heaven, has defeated them all. Thus it must be. Such a war must end in the destruction of those who wage it against us.
The high honor and chivalry, the dignity and humanity of the public character of the
South should not be compromised by State policy or military authority.
But when the enemy, of multifarious races and hues, by his brutish outrages and fiendish war cries, stirs up the blood and the wildest passions of the
Southern soldier in the field of battle, it would be neither demanded by justice or humanity that he should be checked in administering upon the foe the most terrible retribution.
