Rebellion Record: a Diary of American Events: Documents and Narratives, Volume 8.
Frank Moore, Ed.

[389] cupidity, lusts, ambition, and ferocity of the slave. Abraham Lincoln is but the lineal descendant of Dunmore, and the impotent malice of each was foiled by the fidelity of those who, by the meanness of the conspirators, would only, if successful, have been seduced into idleness, filth, vice, beggary, and death.

But we tire of these indignities and enormities. They are too sickening for recital. History will hereafter pillory those who committed and encouraged such crimes and immortal infamy.

General Robert E. Lee, in a recent battle order, stated to his invincible legions, that seeks the “cruel foe to reduce our fathers and mothers, our wives and children, to abject slavery.” He does not paint too strongly the purposes of the enemy or the consequences of subjugation. What has been done in certain districts is but the prologue of the bloody drama that will be enacted. It is well that every man and woman should have some just conception of the horrors of conquest. The fate of Ireland at the period of its conquest, and of Poland, distinctly foreshadows what would await us. The guillotine, in its ceaseless work of blood, would be revived for the execution of the “rebel leaders.”

The heroes of our contest would be required lay down their proud ensigns, on which are recorded the battle-fields of their glory, to stack their arms, lower their heads in humiliation and dishonor, and pass under the yoke of abolition misrule and tyranny. A hateful inquisition, made atrocious by spies and informers; starchamber courts, enforcing their decisions by confiscations, imprisonments, banishments, and death; a band of detectives, ferreting out secrets, lurking in every family, existing in every conveyance; the suppression of free speech; the deprivation of arms and franchises; and the everpresent sense of inferiority would make our condition abject and miserable beyond what freemen can imagine. Subjugation involves every thing that the torturing malice and devilish ingenuity of our foes can suggest.

The destruction of our nationality, the equalization of whites and blacks, the obliteration of State lines, degradation to colonial vassalage, and the reduction of many of our citizens to dreary, hopeless, remediless bondage. A hostile police would keep “order” in every town and city. Judges, like Busteed, would hold our courts, protected by Yankee soldiers. Churches would be filled by Yankee or tory preachers. Every office would be bestowed on aliens. Absenteeism would curse us with all its vices. Superadded to these, sinking us into a lower abyss of degradation, we would be made the slaves of our slaves, hewers of wood and drawers of water for those upon whom God has stamped indelibly the marks of physical and intellectual inferiority. The past of foreign countries need not be sought unto to furnish illustrations of the heritage of shame that subjugation would entail. Baltimore, St. Louis, Nashville, Knoxville, New-Orleans, Vicksburgh, Huntsville, Norfolk, Newbern, Louisville, and Fredericksburgh are the first fruits of the ignominy and poverty of Yankee domination.

The sad story of the wrongs and indignities endured by those States which have been in the complete or partial possession of the enemy, will give the best evidence of the consequences of subjugation. Missouri, a magnificent empire of agricultural and mineral wealth, is to-day a smoking ruin and the theatre of the most revolting cruelties and barbarisms. The minions of tyranny consume her substance, plunder her citizens, and destroy her peace. The sacred rights of freemen are struck down, and the blood of her children, her maidens, and her old men is made to flow, out of mere wantonness and recklessness. No whispers of freedom go unpunished, and the very instincts of self-preservation are outlawed. The worship of God and the rites of sepulture have been shamefully interrupted, and, in many instances, the cultivation of the soil is prohibited to her own citizens. These facts are attested by many witnesses, and it is but a just tribute to that noble and chivalrous people, that, amid barbarities almost unparalleled, they still maintain a proud and defiant spirit toward their enemies.

In Maryland, the judiciary, made subservient to executive absolutism, furnishes no security for individual rights or personal freedom; members of the Legislature are arrested and imprisoned without process of law or assignment of cause, and the whole land groaneth under the oppressions of a merciless tyranny.

In Kentucky, the ballot-box has been over-thrown, free speech is suppressed, the most vexatious annoyances harass and embitter, and all the arts and appliances of an unscrupulous despotism are freely used to prevent the uprising of the noble patriots of “the dark and bloody ground.” Notes of gladness, assurances of a brighter and better day, reach us, and the exiles may take courage and hope for the future.

In Virginia, the model of all that illustrates human heroism and self-denying patriotism, although the tempest of desolation has swept over her fair domains, no sign of repentance for her separation from the North can be found. Her old homesteads dismantled, her ancestral relics destroyed, her people impoverished, her territory made the battle-ground for the rude shocks of contending hosts, and then divided, with hireling parasites mockingly claiming jurisdiction and authority, the Old Dominion still stands with proud crest and defiant mien, ready to tramp beneath her heel every usurper and tyrant, and to illustrate afresh her sic semper tyrannis, the “proudest motto that ever blazed on a nation's shield or a warrior's arms.”

To prevent such effects, our people are now prosecuting this struggle. It is no mere war of calculation, no contest for a particular kind of property, no barter of precious blood for filthy lucre. Every thing involved in manhood, civilization, religion, law, property, country, home, is at stake. We fight not for plunder, spoils, pillage, territorial conquest. The government tempts by no prizes of “beauty or booty,” to be