The pedlars on horseback.
We had never expected to see the day when the
Yankees would undertake to astonish the world with noble deeds of horsemanship, and least of all, when they should expect to fright the
South from its propriety by cavalry.
Well aware of the fact that whilst the
Southern child is cradled as it were on horseback, and becomes as familiar with equestrian exercise as the Arab of the desert, the
Yankee has no affinities with the horse, but looks up to him naturally and properly as a superior being, we had not conceived it within the limits of even Yankee audacity to adopt the horse as an instrument of Southern subjugation.
But, if we had recalled to mind the history of that enterprising people before the era of railroads, we could not have failed to remember that the horse was the identical animal by which the
Yankee originally subjugated commercially the
South, and all other portions of the country not accessible by water.
The era of Yankee pedlar wagons was unknown to the present generation; but of all the raids that the
South has suffered, or is likely to suffer, none can equal the depletion which she suffered financially from the raids of the
Yankee pedlars, who traversed her whole surface, from the
Potomac to the
Gulf, and laid every farm house under contribution to their insatiable cupidity.
The horse, not mounted, but hitched to a pedlar-wagon; not cavorting and gaily caparisoned, but staid and solemn as his master, was driven by the
Yankees of a former generation to every Southern plantation, and never left without carrying off all the loose change of the neighborhood, depositing in lieu thereof Yankee clocks and notions generally, of the most worthless and miserable character.
The celebrated
Tom Corwin, at a Pilgrim Rock festival in
Ohio, after listening to an oration in which the Sons of the Pilgrims were extolled to the Heavens as the pioneers of all the comforts and civilization of the continent, said that, for his part, he never saw a
Son of the Pilgrims till he saw one driving a pedlar cart, and that he did not make his appearance till the region he visited had become thoroughly reclaimed from the savages and had a little surplus cash!
Where the carcase is there the eagles are gathered together, and where the money is, there the pedlar, with an eve keener than the eagle's, discovered their prey.
The introduction of railroads only transferred the pedlars from wagons to cars, and never till the present war did they let go their hold of their victims.
They are now betaking themselves to horses again, for the same old object of rascality and plunder, only carried on in a different form.
They are simply coming now as open and acknowledged banditti, whereas they stole from us before under the guise of peaceful traders and friends.
We honestly believe that we have less to fear from them now than formerly, for the horse, except meek, gentle, and hitched to a pedlar cart, is not the animal which can be used by a Yankee with any probabilty of military renown.
Yet, strange to say, the announcement that the
Yankees intend to put a hundred thousand men on horseback, and savage the whole
South with fire and sword, has created as great a sensation as did the gunboats, which at one time were regarded as amphibious monsters, and capable of subjugating the whole Southern Confederacy.
We do not desire to underrate the real damage which may be done by extensive cavalry raids, and feel quite sure that whenever they can ascertain beforehand, as they did in the late raid near this city, that they will meet with no resistance, they will pounce down upon us like so many lions.
If, for example, the people of this city should forget the warning of the Stoneman raid and neglect to organize the large number of men here capable of bearing arms, the
Yankees would readily ascertain the fact, and come swooping down upon
Richmond, burn the bridges, and perhaps carry off some important prisoners.
A contemporary suggests that they might even rush far to the interior, and that even the inland town of
Danville — considered the safest place in the
Commonwealth — might be reached by the invading hordes.
When we bear in mind the long procession of pedlar wagons which in days gone by passed through
Danville on their way to
North Carolina, we are not without misgiving that the pedlars on horseback may take the same route with the ancestral pedlars in wagons.
But to be forewarned is, or ought to be, to be forearmed.
The Yankee horsemen are never coming when the people are prepared for their reception, and in a thickly wooded country it is easy, with a small body of resolute men, to keep off a large body of cavalry, and make their enterprise a disastrous failure.
There are, besides, modes of obstructing the progress of cavalry as well as of gunboats, and torpedoes for the land as well as the sea. The country authorities should at once put themselves in communication with our military leaders, and they will doubtless receive some information which will satisfy them that the projected raid of the pedlars on horseback can be made the most ruinous speculation that ever Yankees engaged in. But they should not delay their action for a moment, if they wish to save their property and to bag a good many Yankee horses.
The pedlars themselves, if they venture far in the interior, can all be made prisoners, but we have more than enough of such cattle.
What we want is their horses, and every
Virginia farmer, instead of permitting his own horses to be taken, should make his plans to add to his own stables by the addition of Yankee horses, the only inhabitants of Yankeedom who are a desirable addition to Southern territory.
Let it never be forgotten that the horse, except in a pedlar cart, is never to be dreaded by the descendants of the Cavaliers.
They owe it to their own reputation, not less than their security, and to the wrongs which their fathers suffered at the hands of the pedlars, that every Yankee horse engaged in a Southern raid shall be made prisoner, and go to liquidate as far as possible the damages which the country has suffered, from first to last, from the cheating, thieving, and robbing sons of the Pilgrims.
