In a late
general order, the unhappy ‘"Furs and Feathers."’ who is now only nominally retained at the head of the army being like a weathercock on a church spire, more for ornament than use, expresses great concern for the preservation of the tomb of
Washington and the surrounding grounds, from desecration.--He has the assurance to say that ‘"
Mount Vernon has already been overrun by bands of rebels, who, having trampled under foot the
Constitution of the United States--the ark of our freedom and prosperity — are prepared to trample on the ashes of him to whom we are all mainly indebted for these mighty blessings."’
This is cool in the
Lieutenant General of
Lincoln, who has confessedly trampled the
U.S. Constitution under foot himself a dozen times, and converted the ‘" freedom and prosperity"’ of which it is an ‘"ark,"’ into a military despotism and universal bankruptcy.--But when the metaphorical
Scott attempts to convey the impression that the ‘"bands of rebels"’ have injured the property at
Mount Vernon, and are prepared to ‘"trample on the ashes"’ of
George Washington, he rises to a pitch of malignant mendacity that ought at once to recommend him — now that he is displaced from active military duty-- to a prominent position in the staff of the New York
Tribune.
No one knows better than
Wingfield Scott that the ashes of
Washington are dearer to those bands of rebels than they can, by any possibility, be to his invading hordes.
They are ‘"bone of our bone, and flesh of our flesh."’
Washington is our own; his kinsmen are among these rebel bands, as he would be, were be alive; he was himself a rebel, and called so by the enemies of our country in '76 as flippantly as the military tool of the
Washington despot now uses the term.
No one knows better than
Wingfield Scott that the people of the
South are not the vandals and barbarians be would have the world believe.
The wretched traitor!
If he had a particle of
Virginia blood left in his veins, it would crimson his whole body at the mention of his name in connection with that of
George Washington. --There was no position in the
British service which
George Washington might not have held by refusing to be a ‘"rebel,"’ and holding on, like
Wingfield Scott, to the loaves and fishes.
He might have had any rank, and what
Scott will appreciate equally, any emolument, if he had stood by the
King and deserted his country.
But, like
Moses of old, he chose to endure affliction with his own people, rather than be a magnate in the
Court of a tyrant.
He exposed all his worldly goods to confiscation, his neck to the halter, his name to the hazard of going down to posterity as the name of an unsuccessful rebel, who ended his days on the gallows, rather than give up his country and the right.--He even refused to receive any remuneration from his Government beyond his actual expenditures in the service.
Compare with this noblest gentleman and hero the world has ever seen, the vain and mercenary creature, the foul traitor, who dares to assert that the bands of rebels will treat with sacrilegious rudeness the dust of
Washington! Did
Washington ever think of self, and did
Scott ever think of anything else?
Did
Washington ever hesitate at pecuniary sacrifices, and is it not dollars and cents alone that has made
Scott a traitor to
Virginia?
It is his salary as
Lieutenant-General, $17,000, and doubtless a bonus besides from some of the ‘"merchant princes"’ of
Sodom, which made him play to
Virginia, and bought him to raise the very sword his mother gave him in her pride and love, to stab her to the heart.
Out upon the base renegade!
No Yankee of them all, with all their fanaticism and love of gold, save only
Benedict Arnold, who, like
Scott, was bought with a price, has reached the sordid and heartless baseness of the
Lieutenant General of the United States Army.
In all this war — this wicked war of invasion on their part — they have stood together like one man, and, with all their love of money, not one of them has sold himself like the venerable slanderer, who professes to believe that bands of rebels are about to trample on the ashes of
Washington. ‘"To what base uses must we come, Horatic, "’ when the reputation of the mightiest of mankind must be be slavered with the slimy adulation of
Edward Everett, and his sepulchre guarded by the traitor
Scott!
