Always the same.
The Yankee device of representing the
South as the aggressors in this war, and themselves as a peaceful and loyal people, simply engaged in maintaining the laws, is an ancient and stereotyped trick of tyrants in general, and of Puritans in particular.--The distinguished naval author and officer.
Captain Marryatt, in his "Diary in
America, " published in 1889, comments with deserved severity on the disgusting cant of the
Pilgrim Fathers, as illustrated in their conduct to the Indians when they thirsted for their territory.
After the death, or rather murder, of
Alexander, the brother of the celebrated
Philip, the latter prepared for war. "And now," says the reverend historian of the times, "war was begun by a fierce nation of Indians upon an
honest, harmless generation of
English, who might very truly have said to the aggressors, as it was said of old to the Ammonites, "I have not sinned against thee; but thou doest me wrong to war against me." "Fanaticism alone," exclaims
Capt. Marryatt, "deep, incurable fanaticism, could have induced such a remark."
When the war was brought to a close by the death of the aggressor, the noble and high spirited Philip, and his head had been carried in triumph on a pike by this "honest, harmless people," his helpless, innocent child of nine years old was captured, and there was actually a council held to put this poor child to death!
And the
Puritan clergy
quoted Scripture that the child must die! Dr. Iverson Mather, one of their most famous saints, united with the other clergy in recommending that it be murdered.
The pious souls consented at last to sending it, with many others, to the Bermudas, to be sold as a slave! "Stern virtues" of the
Pilgrim Fathers! "Call them rather," says
Marryatt, "diabolical vices." Gracious Heaven!
When shall we learn to call things by their right names?
To which we answer, "Never as long as the race of the
Pilgrim Father is extant.
Their character is unchanged and unchangeable.
Hypocrisy, indirection, and cant, are interwoven with the inmost texture of their souls.
They report the
South now, as they reported Philip, as aggressors, making war upon an honest, harmless, generation of long suffering Christians.
They imbrue their hands in the blood of our children and our brethren, and inflict unheard of cruelties upon all ages and sexes, and because we do not unresistingly submit to their atrocities they raise their hands in holy horror, and declare this "the most wicked rebellion the world ever saw!"
