"Sauce for the Goose, Sauce for the Gander."
The whole Yankee press unites its voice in one long, loud, savage yell over the burning of
Chambersburg by
General McCausland.
It is pronounced an "infamy" by one of these papers.
It is denounced as a most scandalous and a most unchristian outrage by them all. --It is some comfort, at least, to find out that although where the people of the
Confederacy are concerned the
Yankee race have lost all power of distinguishing between right and wrong, yet when the question is brought home to their own firesides they, in some sort, recover it. The Yankee government, during this whole campaign, has been acting upon the avowed determination to render the
South one vast desert, and for that purpose has turned loose upon it the most atrocious bands of ruffians that were ever employed by any civilized power. --They have organized murder, arson, robbery and rape into a system, and have employed them as regular adjuncts and assistants in carrying out the plans of
Grant and
Sherman.
They have laid whole districts in ashes and reduced whole communities to beggary; and now, it seems, when the chalice is commended to their own lips, they discover it is poison; when their own system is adopted, they discover that it is infamous; when their own weapons are turned upon them, they become aware that they are not lawful.
Nothing of this was heard as long as they had it their own way — as long as the burning was all on one side — as long as they could destroy the houses of our people without any fear for their own. Then, every raid was recorded in the highest strain of exultation.
No pity was felt for the families reduced to starvation, the women and children burnt out of house and home, the hundreds of human beings left to perish of want.
The cowardly ruffians engaged in these infernal scenes of havoc were applauded as the most gallant of the military race.
The cries of a whole people fell unheeded, or were met with shouts of derision.
Now, the tone is changed.
It is nothing now but lamentation and distress.
Vengeance has come at last, and it has come in a form so terrible that the
Yankee heart is appalled at its aspect.
We love to hear these cries of anguish.
This howl of desolation and despair from the quarter in which it is heard comes upon our car like "music on the waters." It is sweet beyond all earthly sweetness, gratifying beyond all earthly gratification.
Glad are we that retribution has at last put forth its terrible arm and assumed its most terrible shape.
We hope it will not stop here.
We hope it will be pushed to the farthest extremity to which it is capable of going.
We should be glad to hear that the whole Valley of the Susquehanna was one long, unbroken, irresistible sea of flame, not to subside as long as a house, or a tree, or a blade of grass, or a stalk of corn, remained to testify that it had ever been inhabited by man. No sight could be more agreeable to our eyes than to behold every part of Yankeedom within reach of our armies converted into a mass of ashes — to see every beast that walked on four feet, and could not be driven off for our use, slaughtered and left to rot upon the ground.
It is time to visit the execrable scoundrels with the wrath of a people who, offending nobody, and remaining quietly at home in their own houses, have been gratuitously visited with all the horrors of an Oriental war. Are we wrong?--Read the following extract, from a lady to her daughter, written from the
Sweet Springs, under date of the 1st of July, and published in the
Enquirer yesterday.
One of the first ladies of the land went to the scoundrel
Hunter to ask him for a guard to protect her house.
He told her to go home, for he had determined to burn the house; that he intended to burn every house within five miles of any spot at which any of his men had been bushwhacked.
She said:--‘"Surely, General, you cannot be in earnest in saying that you intend that women and children are to suffer such a calamity in addition to all besides that is the natural consequence of war. --’ He replied in these remarkable words: ‘"
I do intend that the women shall suffer; I organized this raid for that especial purpose; the women of the South are the fiends that have kept up this war; they have thrust their fathers, sons and brothers into the rebel army, and have endured everything that could incite the men to go on with the war, and I intend to crush the proud, rebellious spirit of you Virginians.
I am coming back to burn your grain fields, to make a desert of the pride of the earth, to desolate your country, and to starve women and children, but what they shall come back to their lawful Government — the best Government on the face of the earth!"’
Let any man read this and say that vengeance is not a holy duty on our part.
Let any man read it, and say what mercy such a foe deserves.
Let any man read it, and feel compassion for the miscreants at
Chambersburg, who but the other day were exulting in the victory of
Hunter, and are now howling over their own losses.
We feel none, but hope the good work will go on until vengeance itself shall have become sickened with the ruin it shall have wrought.
