Falsehood and duplicity of the enemy.
Falsehood is one great agent of the invation and attempt at subjugation of the
Southern States.
Duplicity and dissimulation are auxiliary agencies.
By falsehood the public opinion of
Europe is to be monided, and the people of the
South to be alarmed.
The Northern armies and armaments are represented as the most gigantic and irresistible — the plans of the war for subjugation are deseribed as complete and ensuring the speedy and certain crushing of the ‘"rebellion"’--the achievements of their iron-clad gunboats on the waters are said to be a sample of the closing in of the folde of the anaconda which is so crush us ‘"out,"’ (as the
Yankees say)--their victories are magnified — the number of their prisoners exaggerated — leading and prominent Southern men are crawfishing out of the ‘"rebellion"’--their flag is said to be hailed with joy in the
South--
Tennessee is getting ready, through her Legislature, to submit to
Lincoln.
These, with innumerable other lies and exaggerations, are spread over the
North and sent to
Europe for effect.
They are put forth with such boasting as none but braggarts could indulge.
No nation that ever existed could equal the
Northern people in this department of their hostilities.
The
Chinese were as nothing to them.
The false statements about their battles were mere feeble efforts at misrepresentation, compared to those of the
Yankees; and their regiments of painted and disfigured men, with gongs and belis, and every species of dissonance to strike terror to the enemy, were lame devices by the side of the ingenious tricks of our Yankee enemies to terrify the
South.
Their arts of duplicity and dissimulation are equally cunning.
In these they emulate the disgusting creature which, by their relec on, they use to illustrate their movement upon the
South--their ‘"crushing out rebellion"’ in the folds of the constrictor.
The bo basking in the sunshine, fixes his eye upon the beentifal little red deer of the
African mountains, and proceeds to decoy him by his fascinations.
The moment the little animal meats the glance of the boa's eyes, and pauses to look at them, his fate is sealed.--He gambols a little, recedes, and advances, ever diminishing the previous space between himself and his fate upon each return, until he is seized and wrapped in the folds of the monster whose spells he was powerless to resist.
The Northern serpent who has penetrated the
Southern Even, attempts his natural arts.--At Hatteres, and
Nashville, and
Roanoke Island he shows his brightest hues and assumes his quietest and most innocent sirs.
He proposes to harm no one--to disturb nobody's private rights — and only to restore quiet and security to the land — Were we simple and irrational like the little red deer, we must naturally fall a prey to his natural arts.
But can be decoy Southern people by such duplicity, such cherming.
Are they to forget the burning houses, the confiscated property, the stolen and liberated servants of Southern people ? Will they forget the ernelties practised upon our loyal and true citizens, the brutal treatment of women and shildren by the ruthless inrader!
Is
Southern blood, shed in their defence, to be forgotten, and sink into the ground unavenged !--May, can they forget the cause of the Separation of the
South from the
North--or Even Think of the Possibility of Reconstruction ?
To listen to the enemy, to
think, even, of forgetting these things, would be fetal.
Once in his power, we would indeed be ‘"
crashed out."’ Our property would be confiscated and passed over to the possession of our conquerers — our sacred boundaries would be blotted from the map, and our States be no more known to the world — ruined, down-trodden, disgrased forever in the eyes of the world, so that our children would fain disown their parents, the very night of our poor country would be intolerable to us, and those of us who were able would wander away from the land of our birth to find what relief we might in stranger climes.
Those that remained would welcome death as a friend to close their eyes and their memories upon events and scenes fraught only with dishonor and misery for them !
This is what the
Northern Serpent would do!
Can he ? Shall be ! The response of a free people, who deserve to be free, will be given before this war is over.
And all the falsehoods and all the cherming arts of the most artful and unscrupulous of foes that ever waged a war, will be dissolved like the ‘"baseless fabric of a vision."’
