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From Chattanooga to Marietta there was presented to the eye one vast scene of misery. The fugitives from ruined villages or deserted fields songht shelter in the mountains. Cities were sacked, towns burnt, populations decimated. All along the roads were great wheat-fields, and crops sufficient to feed all New England, which were to be lost for want of laborers. The country had been one of the most beautiful of the Confederacy. One looked upon the gentle undulations of the valleys, terminating in the windings of the rivers, and flanked by the majestic barriers of the mountains. This beautiful country had been trodden over by both armies. In every town the more public buildings and the more conspicuous residences had been devoured by fire, or riddled with shot and shell. Every house used as headquarters, or for Confederate commissary stores, or occupied by prominent citizens, had been singled out by the enemy for destruction. In some instances churches had not escaped. They had been stripped for fire-wood or converted into barracks and hospitals. Fences were demolished, and here and there a lordly mansion stood an unsightly ruin.

The vandalism of Hunter in Virginia drew upon him the censure of the few journals in the North which made any pretension to the decencies of humanity. At Lexington, he had burned the Virginia Military Institute with its valuable library, philosophical and chemical apparatus, relics and geological specimens; sacked Washington College, and burned the house of ex-Governor Letcher, giving his wife only ten minutes to save a few articles of clothing.

In the Southwest, the hellish crimes of the enemy were enough to sicken the ear. The expedition of Sturgis, defeated, as we have seen, in Mississippi by Forrest, flourished the title. of the "Avengers of Fort Pillow." "Before the battle," says a correspondent, "fugitives from the counties through which Sturgis and his troops were advancing, came into camp detailing incidents which made men shudder, who are accustomed to scenes of violence and bloodshed. I cannot relate the stories of these poor frightened people. Robbery, rapine, and the assassination of men and women, were the least crimes com

servants, can be suited by applying at the refugee quarters on Broadway, between Ninth and Tenth. This is sanctioned by Captain Jones, Provost Marshal."

mitted, while the 'Avengers of Fort Pillow' overran and deso-. lated the country. Rude unlettered men, who had fought at Shiloh, and in many subsequent battles, wept like children when they heard of the enormities to which their mothers, sisters, and wives had been subjected by the negro mercenaries of Sturgis."

Such enormities were monstrous enough; they shocked the moral sentiment of the age; yet they did not affright the soul of the South. The outrages practised upon helpless women, more helpless old age, and hopeless poverty, assured the people of the Confederacy of the character of their enemies, and the designs of the war, and awakened resolution to oppose to the last extremity the mob of murderers and lawless miscreants who desecrated their soil and invaded their homes. had obtained this singular hold on the minds of the Confederates; that every man considered that he had in it the practical, individual stake of his personal fortunes. When such a sentiment pervades a nation in war, who can say when or how it may be conquered!

The war

At the time these pages are given to the press, it appears that the great disappointment of the North in the results of the summer campaign of 1864, has given rise to a certain desire to end the war by negotiations, and that this desire has found some response in the South. The undignified and somewhat ridiculous overtures for peace made in this summer by parties, who, on each side, anxiously disclaimed that they had any authority from their governments, but, on each side, by a further curious coincidence, represented that they were acquainted with the wishes and views of their governments, cannot be altogether a story of egotistical adventures. They betray the incipiency, though an obscure one, of negotiations; and the times are rapidly making developments of the tendency of an appeal to compose the war.

We cannot anticipate what bribes may be offered the South to confederate again with the North. But one has been already suggested in the North: it is, to find an atrocious compensation for the war in a combined crusade against foreign nations.

The New York Herald declares: "With a restored Union, prosperity would once more bless the land. If any bad blood remained on either side, it would soon disappear, or be purged

by a foreign war. With a combined veteran army of over a million of men, and a fleet more powerful than that of any European power, we could order France from Mexico, England from Canada, and Spain from Cuba, and enforce our orders if they were not obeyed. The American continent would then belong to Americans. The President at Washington would govern the New World, and the glorious dreams and prophecies of our forefathers would at length be realized."

To a proposition of such infamy of infamies, the attention of the civilized world should be called. What a commentary upon that European policy which has lavished so much of sympathy and material comfort upon the North, and, on the other hand, has rejected the cause of a people, who as they are resolute in maintaining their own rights, are as equally, indeed expressly and emphatically, innocent of any designs on the right and welfare of others! The suggestion is, that of a huge and horrible Democracy, eager to prey upon the rights of others, and to repair by plunder and outrage the cost of its feuds and the waste of its vices.

The people of the Confederacy do not easily listen to suggestions of dishonor. Yet none are more open to the cunning persuasion which wears the disguise of virtuous remonstrance and friendly interest. It is here where the Yankee peacemaker is to be resisted and unmasked.

It will be for the Confederacy to stand firm in every political conjuncture, and to fortify itself against the blandishments and arts of a disconcerted and designing enemy. It will remember that enemy's warfare. It will remember that an army, whose personnel has been drawn from all parties in the North, has carried the war of the savage into their homes. It will remember how Yankees have smacked their lips over their carnage and the sufferings of their women and little ones. It will remember how New England clergymen have advised that "rebels," men, women and children, should be sunk beneath the Southern sod, and the soil "salted with Puritanical blood, to raise a new crop of men." To hate let us not reply with hate. We reply with the superiority of contempt, the resolution of pride, the scorn of defiance. Surely, rather than reunite with such a people; rather than cheat the war of "independence," and make its prize that cheap thing in American

history-a paper guarantee; rather than cheat our dead of that for which they died; rather than entitle ourselves to the contempt of the world, the agonies of self-accusation, the reproot of the grave, the curses of posterity, the displeasure of the merciful God who has so long signified His providence in our endeavors, we are prepared to choose more suffering, more trials, even utter poverty and chains, and exile and death.

CHAPTER XIII.

AMERICAN IDEAS: A REVIEW OF THE WAR.

Sentimental Regrets concerning American History.-The European Opinion of 'State" Institutions.-Calhoun, the Great Political Scholar of America.-His Doctrines. Conservatism of “Nullification."-Its "Union" Sentiment.-Brilliant Vision of the South Carolina Statesman.-Webster, the Representative of the Imperfect and Insolent" Education" of New England.-Yankee Libels in the shape of Party Nomenclature.-Influence of State Institutions.--How they were Auxiliary to the Union.-The Moral Veneration of the Union Peculiarly a Sentiment of the South.— What the South had done for the Union.-Senator Hammond's Speech.-The States, not Schools of Provincialism and Estrangement.-The Development of America, a North and South, not Hostile States.-Peculiar Ideas of Yankee Civilization.-Ideas Nursed in "Free Schools."-Yankee Materialism.-How it has Developed in the War.-Yankee Falsehoods and Yankee Cruelties.-His Commercial Politics.-Price of his Liberties.-Ideas of the Confederates in the War.-How the Washington Routine was introduced. - The Richmond Government, Weak and Negative.No Political Novelty in the Confederacy.--The Future of Confederate Ideas.— Intellectual Barrenness of the War.--Material of the Confederate Army.-The Birth of Great Ideas.-The Old Political Idolators.-The Recompense of Suf.fering..

It has been a sentimental regret with certain European students of American History that the colonies of America, after acquiring their independence, did not establish a single and compact nationality. The philosophy of these optimists is that the State institutions were perpetual schools of provincialism, selfishness, and discontent, and that they were constantly educating the people for the disruption of that Union which was only a partial and incomplete expression of the nationality of America. These men indulge the idea that America, as a nation, would have been colossal; that its wonderful mountains and rivers, its vast stretch of territory, its teeming wealth, and the almost boundless military resources, which the present war has developed and proved, would then have deen united in one picture of grandeur, and in a single movement of sublime, irresistible progress.

These are pretty dreams of ignorance. Those who ascribe to the State institutions of America our present distractions,

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