Retaliation for Northern Outrages.
We have bayer at any time desired to see on the port of the
South any departure from the recognized rules of civilized warfare, except as that departure might be required by the violation of those rules by our Federal enemy.
But, deprecating most earnestly that barbarity and inhumanity falsely ascribed to our soldiers by Yankee journalists, we insist that duty and mercy to our own people require that for every violation of the laws of war by the
North, there shall be instant retribution as near in kind as possible by the
Southern Government.
The war began in a spirit and with declarations that would have warranted the
South at the start in hanging out the black flag, and in neither giving nor asking quarter.
The infernal beastliness openly proclaimed in the streets of New York and the bellish cruelties threatened by the
Yankee Congress warranted such a resistance on the part of the
South as that to which
Jackson sounded the key note when he shot down
Ellsworth in
Alexandria.
The Grand Army scathe to
Manassas with handcuffs and halters, and, if they had succeeded in that battle, the citizens of
Richmond and of all
Virginia would soon have understood the purposes for which those instruments were intended.
It is true that sobered by defeat, they have since that time disclaimed sundry brutalities, so shockingly beastly that the whole world cried out against them, but have they ever relinquished their bloody and inhumen purposes?, Do they not still hold the halter over the heads of all the chiefs of this rebellion?
Do they not arrest and thrust our peaceful citizens into jail for the crime of patriotism?
Have they not passed a confiscation law, which, if they are successful, will sweep from every Southern citizen every dollar be is worth on the face of the earth?
Have they not armed the negroes against their masters?
Do not the brutal order of
Butler in New Orleans, the horrible murder of
Mumford by that unspeakable villain and similar atrocities in other Southern cities, cry aloud for retribution.
We do not complain that our fields are desolated, that our gardens have been converted into deserts; that the property of our people has been subjected to wanton destruction; that their feelings have been outraged; that the inhabitants of our cities occupied by the enemy have been the victims of unparalleled oppressions and indignities.
We accept them as more or less the characteristics of every war and which may yet be resented in turn upon our execrated foe. But those infamous and inhuman departures from the rules of civilized warfare to which we have referred deserve and demand not only the reprobation of the world, but that retaliation which is the only means of civilizing savages.
The death of
Mumford and every similar outrage must be summarily avenged.
And the impudent Yankee dynasty at
Washington must be given to understand that we hold them as rebels against the
Constitution and traitors to Liberty, whose crimes deserve the halter more than the patriotism for which they threaten the
Southern leaders with death.
