Desperation of the Rebel Leaders

Jeff. Davis recently sent a message to his Congress which not only shows the desperate condition of the rebel leaders, but the utter dishonesty of their course. Repudiating everything that savers of uprightness and common honesty, he recommends that the Southern Confederate Government assume the prerogative of an autocrat, or of the Pope at Rome, and absolve all prisoners released by the U. S. Government on parole from their oaths, and that they again be mustered into the service of the Confederate Government. First, the rebel Government refuses to exchange a like number of prisoners, and then absolves from their oaths those who have been returned! Was ever such high-handed outrage known among civilized nations? But it is upon a par with all their acts, and so sure as there is a God who watches over the destinies of nations, will the machinations of those wicked men be frustrated.

But this is not all; Jeff. Davis also recommends that all citizens of the Confederate States between the ages of 18 and 45 be enrolled for military duty. This act of universal conscription will bear heavily upon those soldiers who, having enlisted for one year, are now about to be discharged and return to their homes. The bright anticipations they had of again meeting their families after the absence of a year, during which time they have suffered unparalleled hardships, are dashed to the ground, and they find themselves arrested by the hand of despotism and forced into the rebel army without hope of speedy relief, unless the angel of death come to their rescue.

Men thus dragged into service against their own wishes, fighting under leaders they have cause to despise, and to build up an oligarchy, the fearful workings of which they already experience, can never contend against the volunteers of the North, fighting for principles and the right, under officers whom they love. A rebellion that sustains itself by violating every principle of morality, that sets at defiance even the common honesty that exists among thieves, that robs its subjects of their property for its own sustenance and presses them into its service to fight for the existence of such things must soon be brought to an end. Its own people have not the heart to fight and in their desperation will soon rise up and crush their oppressors. It is a rebellion not only against the Government, but against the people of the South, and it will not be long before they so regard it, if their leaders do not soon submit to the Government they have sought to overthrow, the masses will take the power in their own hands and overthrow them. There is a point beyond which human endurance cannot go, and it seems to us that the point has been reached in the South, and the traitors will soon rebel against their own leaders if they persist in revolt.

– Published in The Davenport Daily Gazette, Davenport, Iowa, Monday Morning, April 14, 1862, p. 2