We have purposely abstained from using the stereotyped caption, when speaking of this person, of "The Beast," because it seems to us a piece of rank injustice to other Yankee officials, who are quite as well entitled to the designation as himself.
In what respect
Butler is more deserving of this distinction than a thousand of his countrymen who might be named, we are at a loss to imagine.
One would think, from its exclusive application to him, that there is only one "beast" in the
Yankee army.
We have around us a menagerie of wild animals more numerous and various than the Cœsars ever collected for the delectation of the
Roman populace.
And yet we hear of
the Beast, as if there were only one, or one so pre-eminent over all the rest that he needed no other title.
Now, that
Butler is a beast, few will be disposed to question, but that he is any worse than multitudes of his comrades, we beg leave emphatically to deny.
He is not, in our opinion, as had as some of them.--There are others who have committed acts even more cruel; others who never at any time, as we are told he sometimes does, take a fancy to show some symptoms of humanity.
Even in rapacity he is no worse than thousands and ten thousands of other Yankees, who have not stolen as much as himself, simply because they had not the opportunity.
The whole war is a grand robbing expedition, and its avowed object the confiscation of every man's property in the Southern Confederacy.
If our property is to be taken from us, it matters little to us whether it goes into
Butler's hands or is divided in equal proportions among the whole robbing gang.
If we must be devoured, it matters little what particular beast devours us. If
Butler can cheat his Government out of more than his share, we are glad of it, and hope it may be swindled in like manner by many others.
If
Butler is a beast, he is, at all events, an honest beast, makes no professions of propriety, but shows his teeth and bolts his food raw and reeking, after his own native instincts.
He is not a wolf in sheep's clothing.
We know just what we have to expect of him; and "blessed are they that expect nothing, for they shall not be disappointed." The Yankee army, and even the
Yankee pulpit, have beasts as ferocious as
Butler, and to our taste more disgusting, for they affect to be men and Christians, adding the hideous vice of hypocrisy to their other innumerable crimes.