Retribution.
There can be no doubt that
Burnside promises his army the pillage of
Fredericksburg as an inducement to the assault.
A variety of circumstances prove this fact.
A gentleman whose house had been occupied, and was undergoing the process of rifling, asked a general officer, whom be believes to have been
General Sumner, to protect his property.
He was asked if he was a Union man, and upon his replying in the negative, he was told that he would, in that case, receive no protection, either for himself or his property.
Another gentleman approached
General Patrick, with whom he had been acquainted last summer, and offered him his hand.
‘"I cannot shake hands with you,"’ said that leader of thieves.
‘"The day for that is gone by."’ When asked if he would not at least protect his house from pillage, he replied, ‘"No; they may pillage and be d — d, for anything I care,"’ Another asked a man in a
Captain's uniform to protect him against personal violence.
The man said, ‘"I am for bidden to do so by a higher authority than I am"’--A hundred instances of a similar character might be given to prove that the plunder of the town was held out as a prize, not only to men, but officers — A Yankee general officer stole a pair of silver castors from a gentleman's house and carried them off with his own hands.
A gentleman coming down in the cars from
Fredericksburg, heard a man bragging that he had bought exactly such an article for a small sum from a Yankee.
He exhibited them with great glee, saying that he had made a bargain, as he would not take $200 for them.--The gentleman in question had no doubt they were stolen in
Fredericksburg by the
Yankees, and sold to this man. He remarked that the fellow ought to be arrested; but nobody took it upon himself to have it done.
All these things go to prove that the sack of
Fredericksburg was to be the reward of Yankee success in crossing the river.
It is the most infamous crime ever perpetrated upon this continent, unless something like it may have been done in
Mexico or
South America.
We hope our Legislature will appoint a committee to investigate the case of
Fredericksburg, and hold up the rascally Government under whose auspices it was perpetrated to the detestation of mankind.
We wish the world to understand the true character of the
Yankees, who are always thrusting their pretensions in the face of the civilized part of mankind.
We wish it to be known abroad, as it is perfectly well known here, that with all the gloss of civilization to hide their genuine nature, they are in reality as barbarous as a hords of Bedouin Arabs, without any pretensions to the good qualities which are said to half redeem the rapacious habits of those children of the desert.
We wish the
Yankee to be taken for what he really is — a compound of cant, cunning, treachery, avarice, cruelty, and cowardice, minged in such nice proportions that it is hard to tell which predominates.
The predatory habits in which the
Yankee soldiers have been encouraged by their officers to indulge, ever since the commencement of this war while they have not the slightest effect upon the general result, are to the last degree destructive of discipline.
Burnside's army is at this moment little more than a mob of thieves and outlaws, if all we hear of them be true.
The battle of the 13th took out of them all of discipline that the pillage of the town had left.
It seems to be in the way of
Providence that crimes should become the instrument of their own punishment.
Never, except in the days of the Jewish theocracy, did retribution follow more swiftly and more awfully on the heels of crime than it did in the case of
Fredericksburg. --That city was rifled by the
Yankees on the 12th of December. On the night of the 13th there were lying in the fields around and in the town itself, five dead Yankees for every house that had been pillaged.
If our people were a revengeful or a blood-thirsty people, they could not wish a more plentiful feast of blood and vengeance.
