Southern Historical Society Papers, Volume 14.
Reverend J. William Jones, Ed.

After more than two years of a warfare scarcely equalled in the number, magnitude and fearful carnage of its battles; a warfare in which your courage and fortitude have illustrated your country, and attracted not only gratitude at home, but admiration abroad, your enemies continue a struggle in which our final triumph must be inevitable. Unduly elated with their recent successes, they imagine that temporary reverses can quell your spirit or shake your determination, and they are now gathering heavy masses for a general invasion, in the vain hope that by a desperate effort success may at length be reached.

You know too well, my countrymen, what they mean by success. Their malignant rage aims at nothing less than the extermination of yourselves, your wives and children. They seek to destroy what they cannot plunder. They propose, as the spoils of victory, that your homes shall be partitioned among the wretches whose atrocious cruelties have stamped infamy on their Government. They design to incite servile insurrection and light the fires of incendiarism whenever they can reach your homes, and they debauch the inferior race, hitherto docile and contented, by promising indulgence of the vilest passions as the price of treachery. Conscious of their inability to prevail by legitimate warfare, not daring to make peace lest they should be hurled from their seats of power, the men who now rule in Washington refuse even to confer on the subject of putting an end to outrages which disgrace our age, or to listen to a suggestion for conducting the war according to the usages of civilization.

Fellow-citizens, no alternative is left you but victory, or subjugation, slavery and the utter ruin of yourselves, your families and your country. The victory is within your reach. You need but stretch forth your hands to grasp it. For this and all that is necessary is that those who are called to the field by every motive that can move the human heart, should promptly repair to the post of duty, [467] should stand by their comrades now in front of the foe, and thus so strengthen the armies of the Confederacy as to insure success. The men now absent from their posts would, if present in the field, suffice to create numerical equality between our force and that of the invaders—and when, with any approach to such equality, have we failed to be victorious? I believe that but few of those absent are actuated by unwillingness to serve their country; but that many have found it difficult to resist the temptation of a visit to their homes and the loved ones from whom they have been so long separated; that others have left for temporary attention to their affairs, with the intention of returning, and then have shrunk from the consequences of their violation of duty; that others, again, have left their posts from mere restlessness and desire of change—each quieting the upbraidings of his conscience by persuading himself that his individual services could have no influence on the general result.

These and other causes (although far less disgraceful than the desire to avoid danger, or to escape from the sacrifices required by patriotism) are, nevertheless, grievous faults, and place the cause of our beloved country, and of everything we hold dear, in imminent peril. I repeat, that the men who now owe duty to their country, who have been called out and have not yet reported for duty, or who have absented themselves from their posts, are sufficient in number to secure us victory in the struggle now impending.

I call on you, then, my countrymen, to hasten to your camps, in obedience to the dictates of honor and of duty, and summon those who have absented themselves without leave, or who have remained absent beyond the period allowed by their furloughs, to repair without delay to their respective commands; and I do hereby declare that I grant a general pardon and amnesty to all officers and men within the Confederacy, now absent without leave, who shall, with the least possible delay, return to their proper posts of duty, but no excuse will be received for any delay beyond twenty days after the first publication of this proclamation in the State in which the absentee may be at the date of the publication. This amnesty and pardon shall extend to all who have been accused, or who have been convicted and are undergoing sentence for absence without leave, or desertion, excepting only those who have been twice convicted of desertion.

Finally, I conjure my countrywomen—the wives, mothers, sisters and daughters of the Confederacy—to use their all-powerful influence in aid of this call, to add one crowning sacrifice to those which their patriotism has so freely and constantly offered on their country's [468] altar, and to take care that none who owe service in the field shall be sheltered at home from the disgrace of having deserted their duty to their families, to their country, and to their God. Given under my hand and the seal of the Confederate States, at Richmond, this 1st day of August, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three.

[seal]

In the long and bloody war in which your country is engaged, you have achieved many noble triumphs. You have won glorious victories over vastly more numerous hosts. You have cheerfully borne privations and toil to which you were unused. You have readily submitted to restraints upon your individual will, that the citizen might better perform his duty to the State as a soldier. To all these you have lately added another triumph, the noblest of human conquests—a victory over yourselves.

As the time drew near when you who first entered the service might well have been expected to claim relief from your arduous labors and restoration to the endearments of home, you have heeded only the call of your suffering country. Again you come to tender your service for the public defence—a free offering, which only such patriotism as yours could make—a triumph worthy of you and the cause to which you are devoted.

I would in vain attempt adequately to express the emotions with which I received the testimonials of confidence and regard which you have recently addressed to me To some of those first received, separate acknowledgments were returned. But it is now apparent that a like generous enthusiasm pervades the whole army, and that the only exception to such magnanimous tender will be of those who, having originally entered for the war, cannot display anew their zeal in the public service. It is, therefore, deemed appropriate, and, it is hoped, will be equally acceptable, to make a general acknowledgment, instead of successive special responses. Would that it were possible to render my thanks to you in person, and in the name of our common country, as well as in my own, while pressing the hand [469] of each war-worn veteran, to recognize his title to our love, gratitude and admiration.

Soldiers! By your will (for you and the people are but one) I have been placed in a position which debars me from sharing your dangers, your sufferings and your privations in the field. With pride and affection my heart has accompanied you in every march; with solicitude it has sought to minister to your every want; with exultation it has marked your every heroic achievement. Yet, never in the toilsome march, nor in the weary watch, nor in the desperate assault, have you rendered a service so decisive in results as in this last display of the highest qualities of devotion and self-sacrifice which can adorn the character of the warrior-patriot.

Already the pulse of the whole people beats in unison with yours. Already they compare your spontaneous and unanimous offer of your lives, for the defence of your country, with the halting and reluctant service of the mercenaries who are purchased by the enemy at the price of higher bounties than have hitherto been known in war. Animated by this contrast, they exhibit cheerful confidence and more resolute bearing. Even the murmurs of the weak and timid, who shrink from the triale which make stronger and firmer your noble natures, are shamed into silence by the spectacle which you present. Your brave battle-cry will ring loud and clear through the land of the enemy, as well as our own; will silence the vainglorious boastings of their corrupt partisans and their pensioned press; and will do justice to the calumny by which they seek to persuade a deluded people that you are ready to purchase dishonorable safety by degrading submission.

Soldiers! The coming spring campaign will open under auspices well calculated to sustain your hopes. Your resolution needed nothing to fortify it. With ranks replenished under the influence of your example, and by the aid of your representatives, who give earnest of their purpose to add, by legislation, largely to your strength, you may become the invader with a confidence justified by the memory of past victories. On the other hand, debt, taxation, repetition of heavy drafts, dissensions, occasioned by the strife for power, by the pursuit of the spoils of office, by the thirst for the plunder of the public treasury, and, above all, the consciousness of a bad cause, must tell with fearful force upou the over-strained energies of the enemy. His campaign in 1864 must, from the exhaustion of his resources, both in men and money, be far less formidable than those of the last two years, when unimpaired means were used with boundless [470] prodigality, and with results which are suggested by the mention of the glorious names of Shiloh and Perryville, and Murfreesboro, and Chickamauga, and the Chickahominy and Manassas, and Fredeicksburg and Chancellorsville.

Soldiers! assured success awaits us in our holy struggle for liberty and independence, and for the preservation of all that renders life desirable to honorable men. When that success shall be reached, to you, your country's hope and pride, under Divine Providence, will it be due. The fruits of that success will not be reaped by you alone, but your children and your children's children, in long generations to come, will enjoy blessings derived from you that will preserve your memory ever-living in their hearts.

Citizen defenders of the homes, the liberties, and the altars of the Confederacy! that the God whom we all humbly worship may shield you with His fatherly care and preserve you for safe return to the peaceful enjoyment of your friends and the association of those you most love, is the earnest prayer of your commander in-chief.