Self-Immolation

Those pinks of creation, Howell Cobb, Robt. Toombs, M. J. Crawford and Thos. Cobb, of Georgia, have issued an address to the people of that State, telling them virtually that they cannot contend against the troops of the Government with any hopes of success, and giving them such precious advice as this: “Let every woman have a torch, every child a firebrand – let the loved homes of our youth be made ashes, and the fields of our heritage be made desolate.” This is to be done that the invaders may be driven out. And this by leaders who, a year ago, were depicting the glorious results which would follow a disruption of the Union, and the consequent perpetuation of power in the hands of those leaders; who infatuated their followers with the prospect of the spoils of Northern cities, in case the North dared resist the treason; and who inflated them with the notion that one “brave Southron” was equal to four or five sneaking “Yankees.” In one short year, they are compelled to confess their own impotence to fulfill a single one of all the promises they then made the deluded people of the south. We should think that people had had about enough of their advice, and such advice – nearly a million people to burn themselves out of house and home – an idea well worthy of the great mass of southern politicians.

– Published in The Davenport Daily Gazette, Davenport, Iowa, Tuesday Morning, February 11, 1862, p. 2