Undismayed and Belligerent of the Confederacy.
--The
Washington correspondent of the New York World writes:
The first fact which fails under my observation without which it would be impossible for any one to form an accurate estimate of the temper and resources of the
Southern people, is the read ness with which they comply with the arbitrary orders of an absolute government, and the self sacrificing with which they accept the heavies burdens.-- This spirit pervades all classes.
It alginates the and the poor, and transforms individual exactions into acts of the highest devotion, whether this absolute devotedness to a wrong cause originates in the leftest aspirations or in the prejudices, not to say in the most cruel of all the passions, is not for me to say, my provinces being to relate facts and not to investigate moral causes.
But that such is the state of public sentiment in nearly all parts of the
South, not only even witnesses but evidences of an unquestioned to the character abundantly prove.
I could mention hundreds of facts in which the self sacrificing being spirit to which I have just eluded has manifested itself in its loftiest terms.
The hundreds of women who have sent their husbands and sons to the battle-field; the hundreds of widows who have parted with their last boy, their only support; the hundreds of citizens who have given their last dollar; the hundreds of ladies who have given up their last jewels, and the hundreds of ministers who have shouldered the musket during the last month in defence of the sacred soil, are as many evidences in support of my assertion.
There is a Captain of a regiment, a Mr. , sending five hundred dollars to a Sister of Charity for the relief of the sick and wounded; there is an Alabama brigade re calling, with the oath that they will live on bread a one, and go barefooted, rather than leave the flag under which they have fought during the last three years; here I meet the fees of an old acquaintance of mine,
Howell obb, proposing to set the
Government thirty thousand pounds of bacon and forty thousand bushels of corn, at its own price; further
Wade Hampton, the wealthiest citizen of
South Carolina, sending in order for all his slaves, his money, and his estates to
Jeff. Davis.
Add to this the farmers pouring their crops into the
Government granaries, the planters turning their cotton and rice to his credit, the people cheerfully giving up eight hundred millions of dollars of their hard wrought earnings to be converted into bonds bearing a low interest, the payment of which is by no means certain, and consenting to be hardened with a new issue hall as large, and you will have a faint idea of the spirit of devotedness and self-sacrifice which now summates the South This is not a fanciful, but real picture, rather below than above truth."
