The Hope of the Rebels

The condition of the rebels in becoming more and more hopeless the necessity of the rebellion being crushed before the approaching hot weather renders it hazardous to fight the insurgents on their own ground, is causing the Government to put forth every energy to its suppression.  Driven from Yorktown and Corinth, their two strongest positions, there are no other points upon which the rebels can concentrate their forces with any show or hope of success.  Since the beginning of the year they have sustained defeat in every engagement and in almost every petty skirmish they have had with the federal troops.

Fighting in a bad cause, and without a particle of hope for the future, led by wicked men who never had higher aspirations than personal aggrandizement, the incentives to bold and determined action have been wanting.  Like the hirelings of the despotic governments, the rebel soldiery have fought from pure love of fighting, from the excitement it brings and the pay that was promised them, without any of those ennobling feelings that fill the hearts of men contending for their dearest rights.  Defeated at every point, in very desperation they now obey their unprincipled leaders, and doggedly fight without one ray of hope to illuminate their darkened minds.  Shakespeare has said, that “the miserable hath no other medicine, but only hope.”  Even that is denied the rebels, and of all men they are certainly the most miserable.  As the same author further says: –

“So weary with disasters, tugg’d with fortune,

That they would set their lives on any chance,

To mend it or rid on’t.

So cowards fight, when they can fly no farther.”

– Published in The Davenport Daily Gazette, Davenport, Iowa, Thursday Morning, May 8, 1862, p. 2