Saturday, May 15, 2010

The Bright Prospect

The news that comes to us from Tennessee fills the loyal heart with gladness. Since the rebellion assumed shape in South Carolina on the 12th of April last, at no time has the prospect of its speedy suppression been so encouraging. The skies are indeed bright, and it would seem as though the Federal forces had noting to do but to advance and seize upon the very strongholds of secessia. Better still, it appears as if it were the intention of our Generals to leave no hiatus in our victories, but all things being in readiness, to advance from one conquered post to another, until the rebels seeing the Government is terribly in earnest and altogether invincible, unconditionally surrender to the power that for ten long months they have outraged. – We rejoice not more in the subjection of the rebels, than we do for the release of the Union men and women all over the South, who have suffered so much indignity from the insurgents for refusing to aid them in their gigantic treason. What gladness will it bring to their noble hearts to learn that their sufferings will soon be at an end, and the miserable demagogues who have brought such affliction upon them will be punished as their monstrous crime so richly merits. God prosper the right, and hasten the day when the stars and stripes shall float triumphantly over every State in the Union, and extend the aegis of their protection to every man, woman and child who acknowledges allegiance to the glorious Government whose privileges they have so long enjoyed.

As for those rebel leaders who have brought upon our happy country so much distress and sent deep mourning into so many households, may no false sympathy enter the Federal heart to shield them from the fate of Haman. And their wretched, misguided followers, who have been lured by these specious, traitor leaders into an attempt to overthrow the Government of the United States, and establish a slave oligarchy upon the free soil of our common country, may they be punished with all the severity that the humanity of an enlightened nation can inflict, that the great lesson be enforced of the fearful penalty that awaits him who dares raise his fratricidal hand to subvert our liberties.

– Published in The Davenport Daily Gazette, Davenport, Iowa, Monday Morning, February 10, 1862, p. 2

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