A Massachusetts war.
It is said that
Major Willard, a Massachusetts officer, who was killed at the
battle of Fredericksburg, declared to his men, with his dying breath, that this was a Massachusetts war, and urged them to carry it on as such till they had succeeded in conquering the
South.
Of course it is a Massachusetts war; it is so in its it aspirations, in the mode of conducting it, and the objects at which it aims.
Any other State than
Massachusetts, which brought nothing to the common stock, and subsisted only by the patronage of the
General Government, would have blushed to inaugurate an aggressive war against those members of the firm which had brought to the co-partnership all the capital it possessed, and, by legislative protection of the interests of
Massachusetts, had made her a great manufacturing and commercial State.
But humility and gratitude were never among the virtues of the
Puritan bread.
The very fact that all her greatness was derived from the
Union was enough to make her envious and implacable towards those by whom it had been conferred.
The truths that she had been the most malcontent of all the
State; that the had deliberately nullified the fugitive slave law, and upon the annexation of
Texas proclaimed the
Union dissolved, were additional incentives to take the lead in persecuting any discontented State.
There are same nations whom the conferring of favors converts into enemies; who cannot rest under a sense of obligation, and are never satisfied till they have stung the bosom that warmed them to life.
Such is
Massachusetts; a State which, but for the hot-house legislation of the
General Government, for tariffs, passing privileges, and fishing bounties, would now be the most barren rock on the
Atlantic coast.
The prominent part taken by
Massachusetts in this war is not surprising to any one acquainted with her antecedents and character.
We trust that her share may not be less prominent in its calamitous results; we trust that
Massachusetts, which claims the distinction of drawing the sword in this war, will yet perish by the sword, physically, financially, and industrially.
