Who will be the loser?
We venture to predict that whatever the issue of the present conflict between the North and South, the
North will be the loser ultimately, and will have reason to repent in dust and ashes that she ever drew the sword in this unholy conflict.
The Southern trade cannot be conquered back by bayonets.
Humanity under a Southern sky, or any other sky, cannot fall as low as that.
The people does not exist on the face of the earth who are so degraded.
If the
Southern trade can be conquered back by bayonets, then the
Southern people are the most abject and slavish of all the beings that Heaven has ever made.
If the bayonets could conquer our country and deprive us of all political and civil privileges, that very fact would make it impossible to conquer back any other thing which we have the power to withhold.
And when one such thing--Southern trade — is the very motive and mainspring of this outrageous war, that is the very thing which, above all others, our enemies shall never possess again.
That vengeance lies in our power, and if we did not gratify it we would be less than men.
We must show the
North, now, at the outset, that they do not understand this people.
They think that they do; they say we are an indolent, impulsive, self-indulgent race; that we are brave, but vain-glorious and boastful; easily elated and easily depressed; warm in our affections, warm in our hates, but fickle as the moon.
They propose to whip us soundly, and expect us, after an outburst of passionate, but impotent rage, to forget it soon; to buy of them again, rather than take the trouble to manufacture for ourselves; to find consolation in the solid comforts of good eating and drinking, and buy our calicoes and raise our cotton for the benefit and behoof of
New England lords and masters.
We can only undeceive them by the most decisive means.
Nothing short of such measures as those already resolved upon in the
Cotton States will ever dispel the delusions in the
Northern mind about Southern character.
We have already announced the determination, in our principal seaboard cotton marts, to receive no more cotton, where it can be exposed to seizure by the enemy, but that each planter will keep it on his estate, and burn and destroy it rather than permit it to fall into the enemy's hands.
This is the policy which the
South must at once make up its mind to pursue, at every mile of progress which the enemy may make into our territory.
If we cannot keep him out, we must devastate and lay waste every farm, and burn every city which he expects to capture.
Rather than permit our own beautiful
Richmond to fall into his hands, we must rise to at least the elevation of
Russian patriotism, and reduce it to ashes.
Every part of the garden before the
Northern march must be turned into a desert; let him see that a wilderness is to be his only spoils, and he will soon tire of the murderous crusade for Southern money which he has begun.
For no murder for money was ever committed which had about it more of the elements of murder, and was prompted by more cold-blooded greed of gold, and more reckless disregard of the life and property of others, than this most wicked and mercenary war.
Suppose, then, that
Lincoln succeeds in raising his four hundred millions of dollars and his four hundred thousand men; and suppose, also, that with these he succeeds in subjugating the
South, how will the
North reimburse itself for the expenses of the war?--It cannot fall back on trade; it cannot compel us to work our cotton fields for its benefit; it cannot prevent us from making the whole cotton country a desert, and sacrificing ourselves and all that we have for our country.--It cannot compel our negroes to labor for any but their present masters; nor, if it could, can any others intelligently direct their labors.
Its own people cannot live in a cotton-growing climate, and every experiment of raising cotton by free labor has hitherto failed.
We know they say that the
South will think better of all this.
We can almost see the self-complacent smile with which they declare that they understand the impulsive
South.
If they do, we do not, and the whole result depends upon which estimate of Southern character is correct.
We, for our part, feel sure that a people whose mothers give up their sons, and whose wives their husbands, with pride and joy, to the battle field, will withhold nothing else from the altar of Patriotism and Retribution.
