Burnside's Military Executions.
"They were both killed by the first fire, and died without a struggle.
Their bodies were delivered to their friends from
Kentucky by order of
Gen. Burnside!" Thus read the telegram from
Sandusky, Ohio, announcing the execution of
T. P. McGraw and
Wm. Corbin, who were sentenced to death, we believe, for endeavoring to enlist men in
Kentucky for the
Southern cause.
They "died without a struggle," is the consoling announcement; and
Gen. Burnside most graciously ordered their lifeless bodies to be"delivered to their friends! " That man, at the beginning of the war, put on the sir of the humane gentleman; but finding that not popular with the
Yankees, he essays now a shorter road to favor and thrift in the
Northern mind, by throwing off all hypocrisy and becoming the unrelieved and unmitigated brute.
He sees how
Butler has thriven in Yankee esteem — how he has firmly fixed himself on a granite base on the very rock of
Plymouth, where he cannot be shaken or displaced by his crimes against justice and humanity.
He has therefore become his imitator, and is rising in the popular scale along with him Humiliated and disgraced by his failures on the
Potomac, he finds a malicious satisfaction, as well as a facite way of lifting himself up in Yankeedom, in issuing inhuman and bloody orders against all sympathizers with the men whose valor and skill in arms drove him in disgrace from the battle-field.
Safely ensconced in his headquarters, in his own country, he is doing a slashing business among those who, through the agency of his spies and informers, incur the penalties of his orders.
He thus seeks a spite that is free from present peril — a quiet and safe revenge, comforting to a coward's heart and grateful to a coward's feelings.
But
Burnside is only performing the duty assigned him by his master at
Washington.--Like the execrated headsman, he is the mere instrument appointed to his bloody office.--There is, however, a more serious view of the sanguinary orders now being enforced through him and others by the inhuman Government at
Washington.
It becomes the duty of the
Government of the Southern Confederacy, as far as lie in its power, to protect those enlisted in its cause, and to retaliate upon our ruthless enemy his wanton and unjustifiable cruelties.
It has already been announced that measures would probably be taken to retaliate for the execution of two Kentuckians, and we believe those mentioned in this article.
If the cases of those men are property understood, there can hardly be two opinions as to the propriety of this retaliation.
The necessity for it is painful in the last degree.
It is sad that the innocent must suffer.
But no recourse is left the
South.--There is no other way of bringing the enemy to a sense of his obligations to the usages of civilized warfare and humanity.
It is indeed a woeful phase of war which inaugurates such measures of retaliation; but upon the enemy rests the dreadful responsibility.
To the
South there is no other mode left of protecting its people.
If the black flag is unfurled it will be the enemy who gives it to the breeze; that enemy who is seeking the aid of servile insurrections — the arming of the slave against his master, and who has proven himself the ready perpetrator of any outrage, any crime, any horror in all the range of horrors that may injure, or harass, or bring calamity upon the brave and magnanimous people he is endeavoring vainly to subjugate.
