The war of cavalry and negroes.
It is announced in the
Northern telegrams that one hundred thousand cavalry are soon to be armed and equipped for our destruction.
Simultaneously we hear from every quarter that regiments and brigades of negroes are also being impressed into the ranks of our foes.
The cause of these new movements is clear; our enemies, despairing of conquest by armies of infantry, and unwilling longer to expose their own precious persons to the privations, suffering, and death resultant from a fair and equal conflict, are resolved to burn up our cities, bridges, depots, and dwelling-houses, by raids in the interior, and to add the horrors of a
St. Domingo massacre to their own plundering and brutal warfare.
Such elements of darkness do not mean reunion; they do not even stop at the idea of conquest and subjugation; they can only portend utter desolation and extermination.
We feel profoundly touched at the sad and solemn picture of the future that is thus weaving in the womb of fate, but we are not sure that it is to be deplored as an unmixed evil; thousands of innocent, helpless, and noble hearts will fall crushed and bleeding under the wheels of this Juggernaut of fanaticism, but from the blood of the martyrs will spring the seed of the
Church, and the temple of hope and freedom will be rebuilt and reconsecrated.
We cannot thus be subdued.
We shall rise higher, more intact and united as these ten-fold furies, thus turned loose, have to be met and confronted.
Our government must develop its reserved energies, cast away forbearance, and humbly imitating the course said by
Milton to have been pursued by our Creator when the devils heaved up volcanic mountains and tartarean pitch to overwhelm his angels and
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desolate heaven, we, too, must gather the two-edged sword, and pour out a consuming fire that will deluge the
East with destruction, burning, and the horrors of despair.
We can arm and equip fifty thousand of our veterans, who never fled from the face of an enemy, and can move unhurt, and almost unchallenged, from Cincinati to
Boston.
They can lay in ashes the richest and most populous of Northern cities, leaving behind them a belt as broad and as burning as the elliptic.
They can run a burning plough-share over the hot-beds of puling fanaticism, from which sprang the Ate turned loose on the
South.
If our
President will but announce and permit such a policy, he will be justified in the eyes of the civilized world, and will evoke a new spirit in the
South that has never yet been called into action.
Thousands of men are just now thrust out with cruelty and ignominy from
Louisiana,
Tennessee,
Kentucky, and
Maryland, and they are thirsting to go back with fire and sword.
Thousands more of our people, who have felt that mere defence of our own land was not the true policy, would be stirred to their inner depths by the trumpetcall of invasion.
We believe firmly that myriads at the
North are prepared to take refuge in our ranks from the storm of despotism that is darkening around them.
If it be necessary, in order to save ourselves from cavalry raids and negro massacres, that we should raise the war-cry of “Blue bonnets over the border,” so be it. We have struggled long and faithfully to meet the exigencies of this contest in a fair, open, and manly fight; but when the demons of hell are to be turned loose on our beautiful land, and its civilization choked amid blood and flames, we must, in self-defence, pour back the fell tide of ruin on our barbarian foes and make them sing, amid the falling glories of their once-thriving cities, the song of the Persian poet:
The spider has woven his web and the owl hath sung in the towers of Apasiab.
We shall meet the truculent
Yankees as the
Indian Conanchet did when they sought his alliance after murdering his people and devastating his land.
He raised himself proudly to his full height and replied: “The fire that consumed the lodges of my people turned the heart of Conanchet to stone.” --
Chattanooga Rebel.
