Gambar halaman
PDF
ePub

purposes. If there are any men in this country who deserve the doom of traitors, it is these authors of our national calamities. And if the war continue. three to five years, the men we have named, and other smaller lights, will be fugitives in foreign countries. They have misled and deceived the Southern people to the ruin of the country. And when the reaction takes place, as it surely will,-popular vengeance will seek them for punishment. When disaster and suffering pervade the South, as they surely will,— when the innocent people cry out under the burden of taxes and debt which this war will force upon them, then will come the day of reckoning for the real traitors, the political demagogues, who are the authors of the nation's calamity. To avoid this doom, these men will make superhuman efforts to carry the day on the field of battle, and thus prevent the reaction which promises their ruin. But they cannot evade their accountability to God and to an outraged people.

July 6.

False Dispatches.

We find in Secession papers some of the most notoriously false dispatches ever published in the world. These appear frequently, under sensation heads, displayed in large capitals, and with exclamation-points. We never copy them; and the reason is that we are

satisfied that they do not contain a word of truth. They have turned out to be false, and, as a natural result, they have destroyed public confidence in these Secession sensation dispatches. Usually, they carry the lie upon their faces, representing a few hundred Southern troops as whipping several thousand Yankees, killing and wounding so many, while nobody is hurt on the Confederate side. To listen to the "loud-swelling words" uttered by these men, one would suppose that a regiment of Yankees will take to flight upon seeing one Southern man in uniform. We never give these exciting dispatches to our readers, and for the reason, we repeat, that we do not believe one word they set forth, and do not wish to humbug our readers, many of whom take no journal but ours.

July 6.

At their Old Tricks again.

We see letters, and extracts from letters, in several Southern Secession papers, boasting of the vast numbers of Union men in East Tennessee who are coming out for Secession since the late election. Nay, one gifted. writer in a Georgia paper speaks of whole counties having turned over to Secession. This is a revival of their system of wholesale lying carried on before the February election, and again before the late June election. In this late election their lying letters and dispatches, published in the Nashville and Memphis

papers, claimed that they would carry East Tennessee. And yet when the votes were polled they lacked some twenty thousand votes of carrying East Tennessee, whilst out of thirty-one counties they carried five,— four of these by small majorities.

As soon as one defeat is over, they prepare for another, and tell, write, and publish the most extravagant falsehoods as to changes that are going on. We notify them that the ballot-box, on the first Thursday in August, will again convict them of lying. If they have the recruits they boast of, let them elect members to Congress and to the Legislature from East Tennessee. We give them notice that the Union men intend to elect, and that they will do it fairly by majorities, and through the ballot-box.

July 6.

CHAPTER XI.

THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN THE PARTIES-INFAMY OF THE LEADERS OF THIS REBELLION-REBEL STEALING IN TENNESSEE REBEL STEALING IN RICHMOND-SWINDLING HORSE-CONTRACTS-THE SCRIPTURES AGAINST THESE EXTORTIONERS.

As a general thing, in speaking of the troops of the two contending armies we speak of them as "Union troops" and"Confederates." The European papers call the former the "Federal troops." The Government troops should be called the National troops, because ours is a NATION, and has been ever since we abandoned the old "Confederation" and established a National Government.

The Southern troops should not be designated as "Confederates," for we do not recognize their right to separate themselves from the National Government. They are legally nothing more nor less than rebels, or insurgents, and they should be so characterized when we have occasion to speak of them. There is much in a name. Let the two parties, then, in all time to come, be known as the Rebels and Nationals.

The day is coming when the originators of this rebellion will be pilloried in history, as history must name them, and can only name them with scorn. I do not allude to those in obscurity, persons of no

mark, who have retired within the veil of the obscurity of mediocrity; but I allude to the leaders,-the men raised to high public positions, who led off in this infernal crusade, and now head their bogus Government and their retreating army. They are now being despised by thousands who have been their tools, and who had not nerve enough to resist their bad designs in the outset. These villains will stand conspicuous in all coming time, as a man upon the gallows stands; and, to increase their misery, they will have no sympathy from any quarter. No loyal man will welcome one of them to his house, or call a child by his name. Their careers will end before their lives, and after death-if not before—their names will become the synonyms of dishonor and contempt.

Rebel swindling has outstripped any other thieving heard of in the history of this war. I could give many instances, but will content myself with a few, authenticated by Rebel papers. The Clarksville (Tenn.) Chronicle thus rebukes certain unmitigated Shylocks in Middle Tennessee:

"When we think of the self-sacrificing patriotism of our brave volunteers, and then look at the Shylocks at home who extort the last cent from their families for the necessaries of life, the contrast is painfully disgusting. The cause of the South must suffer severely under such a state of things; and should the war continue long, the country will learn, to its cost, that men will not volunteer to fight its battles, leaving their dependent wives and daughters to the tender charities

« SebelumnyaLanjutkan »