Their Real purposes.
That any man should put faith in the pa and honorable intentions which the
Yankees profess, in the event of our submission to their benignant rule, in one of the most amazing instances of human credulity that the world has ever seen.
The poor bird who has been charmed by the festinating gaze of a serpent does not show greater weakness and folly.
If this war has proved anything, it has proved that not one word our enemies say is to be relied upon.
Truth, never having a very vigorous root in their section, seems to have fallen into utter disrepute since the beginning of this war. At no time an object of idolatry, it has been so kicked and cuffed about by them, under the agreeable rule that deception in war is perfectly allowable, that its best friends would not know it from a lie. Truth is a deity which the
Yankees, even in peace, never allowed a place in their Pantheon, but in this war it has never been brought out, except as Qulip, when in a bad humor, brought out the wooden effigy of the admiral, to punch a hole in its cheeks, or clip off a piece of its nose, or put out its eyes.
If there is anything in the world they seem to have a special spite against, it is Truth, which they hate worse than slavery, and never so much as look at, except by accident.
Any Yankee who could be suspected of giving a truthful account of one battle that has occurred in this war, or an accurate statement of the character of any man engaged in it, or a candid opinion of its probable character and objects, would be instantly sent to Fort Lafayette.
All
Europe is struck dumb with their mendacity, which is said to have excited more horror even than slavery among the Old World abolitionists; and the Chinese, who have hitherto been considered the greatest liars in the world, are ashamed to show their faces in public, since the only quality in which they claimed pre-eminence above the rest of mankind, has been surpassed by the ambitious
Yankees.
If any sane man in the
South, after the daily and hourly proofs of the total hollowness and falsehood of our enemies in this war, can still be deceived by their professions, his friends should institute a commission
de lunatico inquirendo without further delay.
What promise that they made have they kept Did not
Seward, at the beginning of the war, give the most solemn assurances to the
Southern Commissioners that no reinforcements would be sent to
Fort Sumter, and that the United States forces would be withdrawn, while at that very moment he was preparing to reinforce the fort to the extent of his power, and bring on a bloody and desolating war?
Did he not deceive
Virginia in the same manner, and by false assurances so completely win her confidence that she had well nigh fallen into the pit he had prepared for the common destruction?
And, putting even this basalt of all Northern men out of the question, what has been the course of that party in the
North which is most conservative, and which has always been loudest and most eloquent in its professions of love for the
Constitution and justice to the
South?
They constitute at this moment the very backbone of this invasion.
Without the money and political weight of cities which had hitherto professed to be conservative, the war, if it had ever begun, would long ago have come to an end. Where are the Dickinson, the Everetts, the Cushings, the Dixes, the Butlers, now?
What has become of principle, of consistency, of good faith, among those to whom the
South once looked as a bulwark against the crusade of abolition?
With one or two exceptions, the conservative politicians of the
North have not only deserted us, but are urging on with might and main this desolating war, whilst the few good men in
Sodom, who keep aloof from its iniquities, are overawed and crushed into silence and subjection by a tremendous military despotism.
The Lincoln Government promised to release our prisoners at
Fort Donelson on parole, and sent them to
Chicago.
They promised to exchange gallant privateers, whom they have kept ironed like criminals in loathsome cells since the beginning of this war; but as soon as they had succeeded in making a larger number of prisoners than those in our possession, they shamefully refused to keep their word.
They proclaimed safety and protection to the
Southern region which should be occupied by their armies, and they have fulfilled their promise by destroying furniture, burning houses, arresting and imprisoning, and sometimes murdering in cold blood, peaceful and unoffending citizens.
Burnside and
Goldsborough made a pompous proclamation on the coast of
North Carolina that they came there with the most
Christian and humans intentions, and followed it up by deliberately shelling a town full of women and children, without giving them an opportunity to escape, and even firing upon vessels which were carrying off the helpless and terror stricken fugitives.
And are we to believe such a people still, when they promise that, if we will only yield to their demands, we shall not surely die?
The truth is, even if they were so disposed, they have no means of paying off their enormous debt without the wholesale spoliation and plunder of the
South.
Is any one verdant enough to imagine that, if the
Yankee succeeds in our conquest, he is going to pay that debt himself, or any part of it?
The whole of more than a thousand millions--the whole of it, to the last farthing — will be wrong from the vanquished in one form or another.
If, ruined and bankrupted by defeat, it cannot be squeezed from us in any other way, it will come by the universal confiscation of all Southern property.
Their army has already been promised a division among them of the fair fields of the
South, and this is one of the few promises made in this war which is intended to be kept.
Cupidity, interest, revenge, all point alike to this inevitable conclusion.
The history of the whole
Puritan race is one which gives no glimpse of hope that when the property of their neighbors is at their mercy justice or compassion will ever indues them to forego the opportunity of its appropriation.
Their whole philosophy upon this subject is embraced in the resolutions adopted by the first
Puritan settlers in
America. --‘"Resolved, That the earth belongs to the saints.
Resolved, That we are the saints."’ The
Indians were made to feel the practical operation of that philosophy to the confiscation of all they had and the extermination of their whole race, and the
Dutch, by a more pacific, but equally unprincipled process, were out of their possessions.
The most instructive lesson, however, and one which the
South should solemnly ponder, is that quoted by the Richmond
Whig, in reference to
Cromwell's invasion of
Ireland, which, our contemporary observes, was conducted on precisely the plans and with identically the same purposes which actuate our foes.
The reader will find the same treachery mark every step of his progress.
Soon after landing a powerful and well equipped army in
Ireland,
Cromwell published a proclamation, forbidding his soldiers, on pain of death, to hurt any of the inhabitants, or take anything om them, without paying for it in This was so strictly extended that, even in his march from
Dublin to Droghoda, where he was guilty of that horrid butchary [he took the place by storm, and, after having promised quarter, massacred all his prisoners,] and breach of faith before mentioned, he ordered two of his private soldiers to be put to death in the face of the whole army, for stealing two hens from an Irishman, which were not worth two pence:
‘"Upon this observance of the proclamation, together with positive assurances given by his officers, that they were for the liberties of the Commons and that every one should enjoy the freedom of his religion, and that those who served the market at the camp should pay no contribution, all the country people flocked to them with all kinds of provisions, and due payment being made for the same, his army was much better supplied than that of the Irish ever had been."’
The conquest having been secured, the disguise is thrown off. ‘"On the 16th September, 1652, the English Parliament declared that the rebels in
Ireland were subdued and the rebellion ended, and thereupon proceeded to the distribution of their lands."’
The whole kingdom was surveyed, and the number of acres, taken with the quality of them, all the soldiers brought in their demands for and each man received, by lot, as many notes as should answer the value of his demand.
The best land was rated only at four shillings an acre, and some only at a penny.
The saluters drew lots on what part of the kingdom their lots should be assigned them.--Great abuse was committed in out the adventurers' satisfaction for the money they had advanced at the beginning of the war; for they had whole baronies set out to them in gross, and they employed surveyors of their own to make their admeasurement.
What lands they were pleased to call unprofitable they returned as such.
The soldiers' land returned as unprofitable amounted to 605,810 acres.
In this manner was the whole kingdom divided between the soldiers and the adventurers of money.
Cromwell and his Council, finding the utter extirpation of the Irish nation to be in itself very difficult, and to carry in it somewhat of horror that made some impression upon the stone-hardness of their own hearts, after so many thousands destroyed by the sword, famine, and by the plague, and after so many transported into foreign parts, found out the following expedient of transportation, which they called ‘"An Act of Grace:" ’
There was a large tract of country, even to the half of the province of Connaught, that was separated from the rest by a long and large river, and which, by the plague and many massacres, remained almost desolate.
Into this space they required all the Irish, whom
Cromwell had declared innocent of the rebellion, to retire by a certain day under the penalty of death, and all who after that time should be found in any other part of the Kingdon — man, woman, or child — might be killed by any who saw or met them.
"The land within this circuit, the most barren in the Kingdom, was, out of the grace and mercy of the conquerors, assigned to those of the nation who were enclosed in such proportions as might with great industry preserve their lives, and to those persons from whom they had taken great quantities of land in other provinces they assigned greater proportions within this, on condition that they should give releases of their former rights and titles, and bar themselves and hairs from ever laying claim to their old inheritance.
"By this means the plantation, as they it, was finished, and all the Irish natives were enclosed within that circuit, the rest of
Ireland being left to the
English.
Some few estate were left to the old proprietors, who, being all Protestants, had either never offended them or had served them, or had made compensation for their delinquencies.
"The
Irish were to confine themselves to Connaught, so that the new English planters might proceed, without interruption, and without that degradation, which former had experienced from an intercourse with the Irish, and the natives, divided by the
Shannon from the other Provinces, and surrounded by the
English might be restrained from their old barbarous incurious.
‘"These colonists were transported (to Connaught) without to ow, cattle to stock, ploughs to cultivate, servants to or houses to shelter them; they were not to settle within four miles of the sea, two miles of the
Shannon, or enter any garrisoned town without orders on peril of life."’
With truth, does the
Whig observe, that ‘"from these instructive extracts we may read our own if we should yield either to the threats or promises of the
Yankees.
The confiscation of lands, to be drawn for by lot among a licentious and foreign soldiery; the seizure of our country, schools, pulpits, with every State and local office by the most vicious and vindictive of our enemies; the lawless mixture of negroes, foreigners and fanatics, would so transform our once happy country that the doom of the poor
Irish would be indeed an act of grace.
The Virginian, seeing his country the home of rice, infidelity and enmity to all he reverences, would gladly go to any wilderness where his children might forg a country he could not rescue."’
Our only salvation from such a destiny is determined and eternal resistance.
There is no other possibility, no other hope of deliverance.
And in that is certain redemption, victory, and retribution.
