Butler and the New million.
When
Sir Hudson Lowe, the gaoler of
Napoleon, had been guilty of some special atrocity rather worse than those which he was in the daily habit of practising towards his illustrious captive, the latter observed, that governments always knew how to select their agents, and that the
English government must have been well acquainted with the character of
Lowe, before they made him his keeper.
What, he added, must be their opinion of this man, when the very offices they confer upon him are a disgrace to him?
What, we take this occasion to ask, must be the opinion entertained of
Butler, by the
Yankee Government, when the command they have conferred upon him is such as no honorable man would accept?
It has been said, that we ought to retaliate upon the prisoners in our possession by the appointment of some person as bad as
Butler.
But where, this side of Yankeedom, shall we find such a person?
In that land they are common enough; but here, we should be compelled to ransack the penitentiaries of the
Confederacy, with the risk at last of failing to find that of which we were in search.
We may as well give up at once all hope of success in such a pursuit.
Butlers grow nowhere but on the congenial soil of Yankeedoodledom.
The outlawry of this wretch by
President Davis, and his calm and contemptuous refusal to open negotiation in which he is to be treated as an agent, hailed as it will be by the applause of the whole civilized world, has stung the
Yankee Government to the quick.
To that circumstance is owing his appointment of jailor-in-chief to the whole Yankee nation.
A thorough coward, he unites in his own person all the attributes that properly belong to that character.
He is brutal, treacherous, remorseless, and covetous.
He will inflict upon the
Confederate prisoners all the insults, all the cruelties, all the miseries that petty malice can devise or human nature, in its most stubborn mood, can endure.
Armed with absolute power, he will encourage assassination on the slightest pretext, and color, if he can, his murders with the sanction of law. Every privation that can suggest itself to a mind familiar with crime will be inflicted.
Solitary imprisonment, cold, hunger, starvation, form the prospect which the unfortunate prisoners have before them.
His wounded vanity will not be satiated with anything short of the lives of his captives, slain by inches, victims of his savage and unrelenting thirst for revenge.
The monster Collot d'herbois, the worst of all the demons of the
French Revolution, had at one time been an actor, and been hissed from the stage at
Lyons.--When he became a revolutionary commissioner he visited that city with a heart on fire with vengeance for the wound which had been inflicted on his vanity.
Of all men he who is at once thoroughly a coward, and thoroughly vain, is the most bloody and the most remorseless.
The ex-actor murdered thousands of women, children, and old men, in
Lyons, and commenced destroying the city itself, house by house, having determined to raze it all to the ground.
Such a character, precisely, is
Butler.
President Davis, with the applause of the whole world, has inflicted upon his vanity a wound which could not be healed by the murder of every human being in the
Confederacy. --He feels that he must go down to posterity as the Monster, above all other Monsters of this war, and his burning heart, and mortified vanity impel him to merit the distinction. --Of the same character is
Sumner, who would fain, if he could, involve the whole Confederacy in blood and slaughter, in revenge for the chastisement which he received at the hands of a Southern representative, which he had not the manliness to resent, which all the caresses showered upon him by our
"dear friends" in
England could never make him forget, which rankles at his heart to this moment, and which will thus rankle until his dying day, in all probability, throwing its shadow between him and his eternal peace, which no soul can enter, that passes from this world with feelings of enmity towards any created being.
Nor has the contemptuous treatment which
Butler has met with wounded the sensibilities of the
Yankee nation less than it has those of
Lincoln and
Butler himself.
We read the truth of this in the extravagant proposition of the
Wisconsin Senator, who proposes to call out a million of ninety days volunteers to march upon
Richmond and capture the prisons.
We see it in the resolution not to treat with our Government here because it is a conspiracy, although it has defied the utmost efforts of Yankeedom for nearly three years, and repeatedly defeated its largest armies and most celebrated captains.
We read it in the proposition of their Congress to send all its members under fifty years of age into the field.
We read it in the resolution to fight until "all traitors" [meaning the whole Confederacy] "are conquered into love for the
Union." Indeed, from all the debates and resolutions of the
Yankee Congress, we can see that the arrow of contempt which proverbially pierces the shell of the tortoise has penetrated deeply into the
Yankee soul.
And why should it not?
Butler is a man after the
Yankee's own heart, the very model of the
Yankee gentleman, the representative man of the
Yankee nation.
To treat
Butler as a thief and an outlaw is to make outlaws and thieves of the whole Yankee nation; and as the
French proverb tells us that the truth alone wounds, the fury of the
Yankee nation is, of all other things, the most natural and the most easily explained.
But the million of men — the ninety days men — there lies the rub ! When Yankeedom is scarcely able, under the strong pressure of the draft, to raise 50,000 out of 300,000, it seems preposterous to think of raising twenty times that number by volunteering.
How is it to be done?
Not by merely calling for them, we suppose, and bounties of $1,000
per man can hardly hold out through such a host.
We wish, however, they would march 1,000,000 men on
Richmond.
We have a plenty of turkey-buzzards in the
South, and the Macfarland slogan, addressed to the vultures, ("Come to me and I'll give you flesh, ") can soon be adopted as the war song of our army.
Our lands want manure, and Yankee blood will fatten a corn-field better than lime or guano.
In a word, one million of raw Yankees, if added to
Meade's present army, will secure that General such a rout and slaughter as he never dreamed of. One hundred thousand veterans under
Lee would not want finer fun than to rout such a rabble.
Meade's present army is far more formidable than it would be when thus reenforced.
