The following sweet
morsel of her fierce defiance and blustering braggadocio appears in the
Philadelphia Transcript, under the
head of “Crush the Traitors.” It will be perused with more of pity than of
anger toward the poor wretches whose ignorance would counsel its indorsement:
The Point has been
reached where forbearance is a crime against our country. The seceding States,
for five months past, have been perpetrating a continual series of outrages
against the Constitution, against the common courtesy of nations and states,
against all public decency and right. Whatever may have been their complaints
or wrongs, they have resorted, not to any remedy of them, but to disgraceful
violence, robbery, murder and treachery. They have spurned all offers of
conciliation or adjustment; they have inaugurated wholesale schemes of
revolution; they have made war upon the Union, simply because it attempted to
victual its starving soldiers, and they have attacked and murdered volunteer
troops peacefully marching to defend the capital. Virginia and Maryland are not
out of the Union, and yet, instigated and applauded by the Cotton States, they
commit monstrous acts of avowed treason. Baltimore has capped the climax by its
cowardly assault upon unarmed men, and by its brutal murder of many of them.
Now the time has
come to end all this. The slaveholding States must be taught a lesson that will
never be forgotten—a lesson of fire and blood. Their threats, bluster,
arrogance, and outrages must be forever terminated. They must be made to feel
that they cannot and dare not arrest and assault our Union and our flag. They
are as weak as they are insolent. The gigantic strength, the superior
civilization, and the boundless resources of the free States are able to carry
desolation from the Potomac to the Rio Grande. The whole North, from Maine to
California, although usually “slow to wrath,” patient and forbearing, is at
last fearlessly aroused. The descendants of the heroes of Bunker Hill,
Saratoga, Brandywine, Tippecanoe, Chippawa, and Fort Meigs, are flying to arms.
Presently the continent will resound under the stern and steady tramp of
unprecedented myriads of the free laborers and mechanics of the North.
Let them finish
their enterprise. Let them plant the stars, stripes, and eagles of an indissoluble
Republic on the steeples of Richmond, Charleston and New Orleans. Let the
traitor States be starved out by blockade and given to the swords and bayonets
of stalwart freemen. No matter at what cost of treasure, blood and suffering,
the slaveholding States must be scourged into decency, good behavior and
subjection.
The cannon is now
the sacred instrument of union, justice, and liberty. The Union heretofore has
been a smiling angel of benignity. Now it must be an angel of death, scattering
terror and destruction among its enemies. If necessary, myriads of Southern
lives must be taken, Southern bodies given to the buzzards, Southern fields
consigned to sterility, and Southern towns surrendered to the flames. Our flag
must wave in triumph, though it float over seared and blackened expanses, over
the ruins of razed cities. Our Union must be maintained, and our Constitution
respected, and the supremacy of Federal law vindicated, if it requires armies
of millions of men.
So let no true man
shrink or flinch. All duties, all occasions must be postponed, until the cannon
and the musket have restored decency to the South, and peace and order to our
country.
Our only desire is
that just such fellows as the valorous editor of the Transcript may be sent on the above delightful “enterprise.”
SOURCES: “Northern
Sentiment,” The Memphis Daily Appeal,
Memphis, Tennessee, Thursday, May 2, 1861, p. 1; "Specimens of Northern Civilization," Nashville Union and American, Nashville, Tennessee, May 22, 1861, p. 2.
