Renegade Southerners.
The profound misery that must overwhelm the Confederate people, if subjugated by the United States, needs no coloring from the pencil of imagination. Deprivation of property is the least of its evils. Political and social ostracism, dispossession from the rights of freemen and the homes of childhood, agonizing as they are, are not the greatest of human calamities. The daily gibes and scoffs of their conquerors from the press, the pulpit, and in daily intercourse, sharp and annoying as the incessant crawling and stings of vermin, may be endured. But to see not only their country gone, and gone forever, but its ideas, customs, social and moral characteristics, all that constituted it the high souled, genial, generous South, supplanted by New England notions and habits, so that nothing of the South remains save its inanimate nature, is an affliction compared with which the grave would be hailed as a blessing. The loyal sons of this heroic land would sooner see it upheaved from its foundations by some convulsion of nature, and buried in the Atlantic, than to behold its national characteristics submerged by a tide of Puritan manners, selfishness and fanaticism. Yet, even in this dire extreme of human misery, there would remain some alleviation. In the bottom of this deep abyss some rays of consolation would fall. It is not so deep that we cannot look up from it and behold some stars still shining in the overhanging sky.--The names of the great souls whom we have given to this struggle will still remain as beacon lights to cheer and animate the oppressed of all climes and all ages, and the memory of our superhuman struggles and sacrifices will flame across the firmament and throw a ruddy blaze into the surrounding darkness.--There is no anguish like that of self-reproach. Hell, of all its tormentors, has no friend like that of Remorse.--From its sharp fangs the loyal son of the South will be always free. There is no dishonor in any human calamity if the sufferer did not bring it upon himself.--Calamities, not thus entailed, may be borne with resignation and fortitude, as the will of Him who knows what is best for his creatures, and who chastens those whom He loves. But there is a lower deep of humiliation than any the South can suffer at Yankee hands. They cannot deprive us of self-respect. But what must be the sensations of those native-born sons of the South, those children whom she has nurtured at her own bosom, who have not only deserted her in her hour of need, but have given their active aid, upon field and flood, to the desolation and subjugation of their native home? What must be the feelings of that large number of Southern-born man, the Scotts, Farraguts, Thomas's, and others, who clung to the United States service after separation because they could thereby promote their personal ambition, and have given their entire talents, energies and labors to the overthrow of their own people and the destruction of the property and institutions of the States which gave them birth? We do not mention Hunter in this connection, for we are speaking of men who may be supposed, amidst all the crimes, to possess some of the ordinary sensibilities of human nature; who, if guilty, are not destitute of all conscience; not of that Hunter who hung Mr. Creigh, and whom the Yankee General Averill and other Yankee officers in vain endeavored to dissuade from deeds of hideous cruelty.--We are speaking of men, not monsters. To say that we respect the Yankee invaders more than such men, to say that history will give those Yankees a niche not as low as Southern Renegades, is but feebly to express the loathing which they will entertain for themselves should they ever succeed in their role of hired assassins and strangle the mother that gave them birth. Thus much may be said for Yankees: that they honestly believed the United States one country, and Florida as much a part of their own land as Maine. And thus much could, with equal truth, be said of the South: that it as honestly believed the Union a league of Sovereign and Independent States, and that to the State, not the Federal Government, the Supreme Allegiance of its citizens was due. We are not discussing the question of which was right, but speaking simply of an undeniable fact. That fact being so, the Yankees might, with sincerity, maintain their ideas by the sword, ignorant as the masses were of the refusal of the Convention that framed the Constitution of the United States to bestow upon the General Government the power of coercion. But what can be said of Southern-born men, raised amid a society where no one doubted the Sovereignty of the States, or the duty of their people, if the General Government should ever usurp the power of the sword denied to it by the framers of the Constitution, to resist with the whole strength of their arm and the best blood in their veins; of men, thus trained, who, to keep their places in the United States Army and Navy, to obtain promotion, to command large armies, and sail in large ships, with the flag of an Admiral at the masthead, become the tools and slaves of Yankees for the subjugation and ruin of their own country? The Swiss, who sold their swords to any power of Europe that would buy them, never sold their swords to invade their own mountains. It will not do to speak of Swiss hereafter as a synonym for that which is most mercenary and murderous. Southern Renegade must take the place of that name. Benedict Arnold, the only Yankee in the Revolution who led British armies into the heart of his own land, will no longer be doomed to solitary confinement. Let him make room for the kindred spirits who have deserted their native sod in this struggle, and reddened the soil that gave them birth, and the streams by which they played in childhood, with fraternal blood. No matter how this contest terminates, we envy not their feelings. If we are unsuccessful, the most miserable and oppressed patriot that is driven from his home to exile and poverty is a nobler and happier being than the man whose body is covered with glittering stars and decorations, but whose heart is defiled by dishonor and tortured with remorse. ‘ "High though his titles, proud his name,Boundless his wealth as wish can claim;
Despite those titles, power and pelf,
The wretch, concentered all in self,
Living, shall forfeit fair renown,
And, doubly dying, shall go down,
To the vile dust, from whence he sprung,
Unwept, unhonored and unsung."
’ There is no shame in being conquered after such a fight as we have made, and against such tremendous odds. But the immortal glory and joy if we succeed, and succeed we shall, if our people are true to themselves, can never be shared by the recreants who have forsaken their native land in the hour of her sorest need. ‘ "When flits this cross from man to man,
Vick Alpine's summons to his clan,
Burst be the ear that fails to heed!
Palsied the foot that shuns to speed!
Deserters of their country's trust,
They ne'er shall mingle with her dust,
But from their sires and kindred thwart,
Each clansman's execrations just
Shall doom them wrath and woe,
Woe to the traitor! woe"!
’
