Order of Secession

South Carolina	December 20, 1860
Mississippi	January 9th, 1861
Florida	January 10th, 1861
Alabama	January 11th, 1861
Georgia	January 19th, 1861
Louisiana	January 26th, 1861
Texas	February 1st, 1861
Virginia	April 17th, 1861
Arkansas	May 6th, 1861
North Carolina	May 20th, 1861
Tennessee	June 8th, 1861

Order of Statehood

Delaware	December 7, 1787
Pennsylvania	December 12, 1787
New Jersey	December 18, 1787
Georgia	January 2, 1788
Connecticut	January 9, 1788
Massachusetts	February 6, 1788
Maryland	April 28, 1788
South Carolina	May 23, 1788
New Hampshire	June 21, 1788
Virginia	June 25, 1788
New York	July 26, 1788
North Carolina	November 21, 1789
Rhode Island	May 29, 1790
Vermont	March 4, 1791
Kentucky	June 1, 1792
Tennessee	June 1, 1796
Ohio	March 1, 1803
Louisiana	April 30, 1812
Indiana	December 11, 1816
Mississippi	December 10, 1817
Illinois	December 3, 1818
Alabama	December 14, 1819
Maine	March 15, 1820
Missouri	August 10, 1821
Arkansas	June 15, 1836
Michigan	January 26, 1837
Florida	March 3, 1845
Texas	December 29, 1845
Iowa	December 28, 1846
Wisconsin	May 29, 1848
California	September 9, 1850
Minnesota	May 11, 1858
Oregon	February 14, 1859
Kansas	January 29, 1861
West Virginia	June 20, 1863
Nevada	October 31, 1864
Nebraska	March 1, 1867
Colorado	August 1, 1876
North Dakota	November 2, 1889
South Dakota	November 2, 1889
Montana	November 8, 1889
Washington	November 11, 1889
Idaho	July 3, 1890
Wyoming	July 10, 1890
Utah	January 4, 1896
Oklahoma	November 16, 1907
New Mexico	January 6, 1912
Arizona	February 14, 1912
Alaska	January 3, 1959
Hawaii	August 21, 1959

We should like to know . . .

. . . in what respect that deluded, crazed fanatic John Brown, who undertook to revolutionize Virginia and liberate the slaves, is more guilty than the rebels now waging relentless, cruel and barbarous warfare within the United States with the purpose of overthrowing the Government and establish upon its ruins a Great Slave Confederacy?  Brown, morbidly sensitive to the wrongs of the African race and the enormity of African slavery, smarting under wrongs visited upon him by the murder of his sons in Kansas, foolishly and wickedly attempted to create an insurrection in Virginia which entirely failed.  The purse-proud vain and conceited slave-holders, who having grown rich and insolent upon the labor of an abject race, despising Republican institutions, and particularly that feature which makes our Government the rule of the majority and gives a man who earns his bread and sweat of his face just as much weight in directing public affairs as he who owns a thousand negroes – despising this democratic feature in our Government, claiming superiority of race and blood, scorning laboring men as no better [than] slaves, these vain, conceited would be gentry conspired to overthrow our Government bringing upon us the horrors of civil war.  A more infamous conspiracy never came to a head in any country. – The purpose of it is abhorrent to every sense of justice and Christianity.  The mode in which it has been conducted is barbarous in the extreme.  The actors in it have violated their oaths, proved false the trusts that had [been] reposed in them, repudiated their honest debts and robbed all who would not unite with them in their wicked rebellion.  The conspiracy of Absalom against the Government of his father was not more base and unnatural.  Yet those who clamored for the blood of John Brown are now making excuses for Southern Rebels.  They must not only not suffer punishment in their persons but their property must be spared.

– Published in The Burlington Weekly Hawk-Eye, Burlington, Iowa, Saturday, March 8, 1862, p. 2

Why The Rebels Did Not Advance Upon Washington After The Battle Of Manassas

The rebel politicians who are playing Congress at Richmond are wroth because after the battle of Manassas, the Confederate army did not take Washington and invade the Northern States. – Gen. Joseph E. Johnston, the Commander of the rebel army of the Potomac, concludes his official report of the battle of Manassas with these observations:

“The apparent firmness of the United States troops at Centreville who had not been engaged, which checked our pursuit, the strong forces occupying the works near Georgetown, Arlington and Alexandria, the certainty, too, that General Patterson, if needed, would reach Washington with his army of thirty thousand men, sooner than we could, and the condition and inadequate means of the army in ammunition, provision and transportation, prevented any serious thoughts of advancing against the Capital.  It is certain that the fresh troops within the works were, in number, quite sufficient for their defence; if not, Gen. Patterson’s army would certainly reinforce them soon enough.

– Published in The Burlington Weekly Hawk-Eye, Burlington, Iowa, Saturday, March 8, 1862, p. 2

It is reported that Dr. Nassau, of the Iowa 2nd . . .

. . . irresistibly carried forward by the excitement of the occasion, marched with his gallant regiment in its irresistible bayonet charge upon the Rebel fortifications at Donelson.  He is since spoken of among our troops as the fighting Doctor.

– Published in The Burlington Weekly Hawk-Eye, Burlington, Iowa, Saturday, March 8, 1862, p. 2

We had a call yesterday . . .

. . . in our absence, from Dr. Hughes, of Keokuk, just returning from a visit to our sick and wounded Iowa soldiers in hospital in Paducah, Mound City and other points.  We understand that he reports our sick and wounded well provided for and well attended.

– Published in The Burlington Weekly Hawk-Eye, Burlington, Iowa, Saturday, March 8, 1862, p. 2

Jefferson Davis’ Proclamation Of A Day Of Fasting And Prayer

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE CONFEDERATE STATES,

A PROCLAMATION.

To the people of the Confederate States:

The termination of the Provisional Government offers a fitting occasion again to present ourselves in humiliation, prayer, and thanksgiving before that God who has safely conducted us through our first year of national existence. We have been enabled to lay anew the foundations of free government and to repel the efforts of our enemies to destroy us. Law has everywhere reigned supreme, and throughout our widespread limits personal liberty and private right have been duly honored. A tone of earnest piety has pervaded our people, and the victories which we have obtained over our enemies have been justly ascribed to Him who ruleth the universe.

We have hoped that the year would close upon a scene of continued prosperity, but it has pleased the Supreme Disposer of events to order it otherwise. We are not permitted to furnish an exception to the rule of Divine government, which has prescribed affliction as the discipline of nations as well as of individuals. Our faith and perseverance must be tested, and the chastening which seemeth grievous will, if rightly received, bring forth its appropriate fruit.

It is meet and right, therefore, that we should repair to the only Giver of all victory, and, humbling ourselves before him, should pray that he may strengthen our confidence in his mighty power and righteous judgment. Then may we surely trust in him that he will perform his promise and encompass us as with a shield.

In this trust, and to this end. I, Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States, do hereby set apart Friday, the 28th day of February, instant, as a day of fasting, humiliation, and prayer; and I do hereby invite the reverend clergy and people of the Confederate States to repair to their respective places of public worship to humble themselves before Almighty God, and pray for his protection and favor to our beloved country, and that we may be saved from our enemies, and from the hand of all that hate us.

Given under my hand and seal of the Confederate States, at Richmond, this 20th day of February, A. D. 1862.

[L. S.]

JEFFERSON DAVIS.

By the President:

WILLIAM M. BROWNE,

Secretary of State, ad in.

SOURCE: Official Records Of The Union And Confederate Navies In The War Of The Rebellion, Series II, Volume 3, p. 120



How Gunboats can be Taken

(From the New Orleans Delta.)

The experience we have already had has demonstrated the impracticability of destroying the iron cased and strongly built gunboats of the enemy by the cannon of forts.  While large ships of war may be easily repelled and destroyed by the fire of forts, these small boats, with a few guns, and secured by iron casemates, can approach near the object of assault, defy the heaviest artillery, and throw shells into an open fort, which will render it untenable.  The only efficient mode of resisting and defeating such craft, in the absence of like vessels on our part, is to board and capture them.

That is it undoubtedly.  The way for the rebels to take the gunboats is to go close up to them, jump aboard and overpower the crews.  This is as bright a proposition as to salt the tails of shy birds before seizing them by the legs.

– Published in The Burlington Weekly Hawk-Eye, Burlington, Iowa, Saturday, March 8, 1862, p. 2

Two Hundred Union Men Imprisoned in Richmond

(From the Richmond Enquirer of the 19^th.)

“The order issued by Secretary of War Benjamin, on Tuesday, for the release upon parole of all the Federal Prisoners now held in this city, at Salisbury, N. C., Tuscaloosa, Ala., and other points of the Confederacy, numbering in the aggregate about three thousand, will have the immediate effect, we presume, of inducing a reciprocal discharge upon like terms of an equal number of Confederate prisoners.”

“There are confined in the prisons of this city about two hundred Union men, chiefly from Western Virginia, whose detention will not, of course, be affected by the order of the Secretary of War.”

Jeff. Davis said, in his proclamation of a day of fasting and prayer, issued the day after the above publication:

“Law has everywhere reigned supreme, and throughout our wide spread limits personal [liberty] and private right have been duly honored.”

– Published in The Burlington Weekly Hawk-Eye, Burlington, Iowa, Saturday, March 8, 1862, p. 2

The Sad Side of the Picture

The following Private letter, written by a former attaché of the New York Post Office, presents another side of the victory gained at Fort Donelson, from that which is generally contemplated:

FORT DONELSON, Tenn., Feb. 17.

MY DEAR FATHER – Sad, lonely, and downhearted, I attempt to write you a few lines, to let you know I am alive and unhurt.  We have had a most bloody fight; there must have been from 5,000 to 7,000 men killed and wounded on both sides.  But the enemy surrendered on Saturday evening, we taking about 13,000 prisoners.  But, dear father, the hardest part of the story is, that out of eighty-five men in my company, only seven came out – the most wholesale slaughter that was ever heard of.

My company was the color company, at which the rebels took particular aim; as fast as one man who carried it would be shot, another would take his place, but the flag was brought through.  Only 116 remain in the 11^th regiment uninjured.

Do not wonder, dear father, that I am downhearted.  My boys all loved me, and need I say that, in looking at the poor remnant of my company – the men that I have taken so much pains to drill, the men that I thought so much of – now nearly all in their graves, I feel melancholy.  But I do not complain.  God spared my life, and for what, the future must tell.  The Eleventh Regiment will, I think (what is remaining,) be left to guard the prisoners at Cairo or Alton, while they recruit.  Whether I shall attempt to raise another company, I do not know at present.  Good bye.  Let the folks at home know I am safe.  Yours, affectionately,

L. D. WADDELL, Captain, Co. E,

11^th Regiment Illinois Vol.

(what is left of it.)

Wm. Coventry H. Waddell, Esq., N. Y.

– Published in The Burlington Weekly Hawk-Eye, Burlington, Iowa, Saturday, March 8, 1862, p. 2

The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Washington correspondent . . .

. . . writes that the officers who were captured by the rebels at Ball’s Bluff, and have recently been liberated, have been examined by the Conduct of the War Committee.  They were all of the opinion that had General Stone moved up the men he had crossed at Edward’s Ferry, and attacked the rebels in the rear, he could easily have driven them beyond Leesburg in less than an hour from the time the men left Leesburg.  Col. Lee says that the rebels taunted him with being “sold,” but that he never knew that any men had crossed at Edward’s Ferry until his return from Richmond.

– Published in The Burlington Weekly Hawk-Eye, Burlington, Iowa, Saturday, March 8, 1862, p. 2

John W. Audubon . . .

. . . the last of the sons of the celebrated naturalist, died at the family residence on Washington heights, near New York, last week.  He inherited much of the taste and talent of his father, and was engaged in bringing out a new edition of the birds of America when arrested by the hand of death.

– Published in The Burlington Weekly Hawk-Eye, Burlington, Iowa, Saturday, March 8, 1862, p. 2

Several years ago . . .

. . . Colonel Benton warned the country to beware of Jeff. Davis in the following language:

“He is a martinet, pulled up with West Point science, dogmatical and pragmatical, within his circle; but that circle is a narrow one, and he moves uncontrolled within it.  He is an avowed secessionist.”

– Published in The Burlington Weekly Hawk-Eye, Burlington, Iowa, Saturday, March 8, 1862, p. 2

David Holcombe

David Holcombe, an early settler of Algona, enlisted September 25, 1861, in Company D, Sixteenth Iowa Infantry. He was badly wounded on Sunday, April 6, 1862, at the battle of Shiloh, dying on the 17th of the following May. He lies buried on lot A, grave 292, in the National cemetery, Cincinnati. At the time of enlistment he was twenty-nine years old. The report of his death was the first intelligence the people here received of the loss of a Kossuth soldier in the Civil war.

SOURCE: Benjamin F. Reed, History of Kossuth County, Iowa, Volume 1, p. 184

John Stockham

John Stockham of the Algona vicinity enlisted early in the war. His friends never have been able to learn to what regiment he belonged. Ambrose A. Call's Pioneer Press, in its issue of May 3, 1862, says that he joined the Sixteenth Iowa Infantry and that the Press had learned that he had been wounded at Shiloh, and later that he had died at Cincinnati. Stockham's name does not appear in the roster of the Sixteenth regiment, neither has it been discovered in the roster of any other Iowa regiment after the most painstaking research with that object in view. It is not probable that this county ever received credit for his enlistment.

SOURCE: Benjamin F. Reed, History of Kossuth County, Iowa, Volume 1, p. 185.

NOTE: The Civil War Soldiers and Sailors System shows a John C. Stockham, Corporal, Company I, 3rd Iowa Infantry.  Of this John Stockham the Roster And Record Of Iowa Soldiers In The War Of The Rebellion, Volume 1, p. 384 names him as “Stockan, John. Age 22. Residence Waterloo, nativity Ohio. Enlisted May 20, 1861. Mustered June 10, 1861. Wounded slightly in back April 6, 1862, Shiloh, Tenn. Promoted Eighth Corporal Sept. 15, 1863. Mustered out June 18, 1864, Davenport, Iowa, expiration of term of service.”  The roster of the 16th Iowa Infantry found in the Roster And Record Of Iowa Soldiers In The War Of The Rebellion, Volume 2, does not list anyone with the last name of Stockham, Stockan or anything resembling it with a first name of John.  There is no pension index card at Fold3.com for John Stockham/Stockan, or for any Iowa troops with the surnames of either Stockham or Stockan.

Per Beverly Pettys’ gedcom file on ancestry.com John Stockham was the son of William W. & Elizabeth (Duncan) Stockham of Scioto County, Ohio.  He was born about 1838 in Ohio and resided with them in the 1850 Federal Census in Adams, Hartford County, Indiana.  Sometime between 1850 and 1856 John Stockham removed to Waterloo, Black Hawk County, Iowa where he was enumerated in the 1856 State Census of Iowa, an 18 year old laborer in the household of A. McHugh.  The 1860 Federal Census for East Waterloo, Black Hawk County, Iowa lists him as a 22 year old law student residing with the family of Arthur McHugh (a merchant’s clerk).  It is probable and very likely that John Stockham named above is the same individual in the 3rd Iowa Infantry as all the facts line up with the exception of his death in Cincinatti prior to May 3, 1862.  As of this writing I do not have a casualty list of the 3rd Iowa from the Battle of Shiloh, nor have I come across his name on any hospital lists.  Since the History of Kossuth County, Iowa (published in 1913) seems to rely on two sources: the first, John Stockham’s unreliable friends, who were not able to identify to which regiment he belonged.  Newspaper casualty lists are laden with errors and often erroneous reports of a soldier’s death due to wounds.  Which calls into question the reliability of the Kossuth County History’s second source, the May 3rd issue of Ambrose A. Call's Pioneer Press, not even a month after the battle) that reported of John Stockham’s wounding at Shiloh, and his death at Cincinnati. 

Funeral Ceremonies of the Rebels

The inaugural of Jeff. Davis, like all of his documents is a concoction of falsehoods for foreign effect.  He talks of personal liberty and of freedom of speech, in a reign of terror, and where no freedom of speech has existed for half a century; of rights of peaceable citizens in the midst of a forced conscription; of the protection of property, in the midst of confiscation and general devastation; of free elections, in States carried into rebellion by pretended elections held under the supervision of rebel troops; and of peace and justice in a rebellion which has assumed all the villainies and barbarisms of the world.

With a lie in his mouth he appeals to GOD. – He should have done that before he violated his oath to plunge the country into civil war.  There is too much blood on his soul now.

Like every Secession attempt, this pronunciamento [sic], while it attempts to give a cause for the rebellion, utterly fails to specify a thing that is not absurdly false.  The only pretense alleged is the “clan legislation for the aggrandizement of the Northern section, culminating in warfare on the domestic institutions of the Southern States,” and he will not deny, and his Vice President has admitted since Secession, that the South always controlled the legislation; and the Administration which he says was to make war on Slavery had not even come into office when he rebelled. – {Cincinnati Gazette.

– Published in The Burlington Weekly Hawk-Eye, Burlington, Iowa, Saturday, March 8, 1862, p. 1

Republican Landmarks

The attempt now making to revive the Republican party on an extra-constitutional platform which contemplates the erasure of a large number of stars from the National flag, makes this a fitting time for considering how far such an attempt is justified by the antecedents of the Republican party or the principles on which it was brought into power.  We will not measure the new creed by the standard of the Convention which nominated Mr. Lincoln, at Chicago.  The Chicago platform was a compromise, in which “advanced” Republicans, like Mr. Greeley, were willing to soften their more radical views in order to conciliate conservative voters.  A truer exposition of the aims of the Republican party is found in the speeches of the recognized leaders who furnished it with ideas, gave impulse and vitality to its movements, and infused into it the courage by which after ten years’ effort, it won its great national triumph.

Among these leaders Mr. Seward held the foremost rank, both in fact and in estimation of the party.  There was no Republican statesman with half his brains and accomplishments that had hodld of his political intrepidity.  During the long struggle of the party for existence and power, Seward boldly led where but few had the courage to follow.  Nobody can have forgotten the storm of obloquy that was raised by his famous “higher law” speech in the Senate.  The offensive doctrines of that speech were almost the sole stock in trade of the opponents of the Republican party, until they were again startled and shocked by the celebrated “irrepressible conflict” speech, delivered on the stump at Rochester in the autumn of 1858.  We may safely take these memorable speeches, which have made such a great figure in the political history of the last decade, as the most advanced landmarks of the most daring and aggressive Republicanism.

If it has been deemed expedient, during the progress of this war to sink even the Chicago platform out of sight, what shall be said of an attempt to revive the Republican party on principles beside which the “higher law” speech and the “irrepressible conflict” speech “pale their ineffectual fires?”

These were both emancipation speeches; but they were both fundamentally wrong, or else emancipation is possible without any such extra-constitutional resorts as Mr. Sumner and his coadjutors now propose.  Both of those noted speeches, though accepted with applause by radical anti-slavery men, were fundamentally wrong, or else emancipation is not even desirable by the sudden, violent, destructive methods which a few men are now found to advocate. – In the “higher law” speech, Mr. Seward in language of which time is already vindicating the wisdom, and will more fully vindicate it with the progress of events, said:

“It seems to me that all our difficulties, embarrassments, and dangers, arise, not out of perversions of the question of slavery, as some suppose, but from the want of moral courage to meet THIS QUESTION OF EMANCIPATION as we ought.  Consequently, we hear on one side demands – absurd, indeed, but yet unceasing – for an immediate and unconditional abolition of slavery; as if any power except the people of the Slave States could abolish it, and as if they could be moved to abolish it  BY MERELY SOUNDING THE TRUMPET LOUDLY, AND PROCLAMIMING EMANCIPATION, WHILE THE INSTITUTION IS INTERWOVEN WITH ALL THEIR SOCIAL AND POLITICAL INTERESTS, CONSTITUTIONS, AND CUSTOMS.”

On the other hand Mr. Seward declared that he equally disapproved of the views of our statesmen who say that slavery has always existed, and only GOD can indicate the way to remove it:

“Here, then,” he said, “is my point of separation from both these parties.  I feel assured that slavery will give way, and must give way TO SALUTARY INSTRUCTIONS OF ECONOMY AND TO THE RIPENING INFLUENCES OF HUMANITY; THAT EMANCIPATION IS INEVITABLE AND THAT IT IS NEAR; that it may be hastened or hindered; and that whether it shall be peaceful or violent depends upon the question whether it be hastened or hindered; that all measures which fortify slavery or extend it, tend to the consummation of violence; all that check its extension or abate its strength tend to its peaceful extirpation.  But I will adopt none but lawful, constitutional, and peaceful measures to accomplish even that end; and none such can I or will I forgo.  Nor do I know any important or responsible political body that proposes to do more than this.  No free state claims to extend its legislation into a slave state.  None claims that Congress shall USURP power to abolish slavery in the slave states.  None claims that any violent, unconstitutional, or unlawful measure shall be embraced.  And, on the other hand, if we offer no scheme or plan for the adoption of the slave states, with the assent and co-operation of Congress, it is only because the slave states are unwilling, as yet, to receive such suggestions, or even to entertain the question of emancipation in any form.”

Mr. Seward’s repudiation of all sudden, violent, or unconstitutional means for effecting emancipation is again asserted in the closing paragraph of this very able and celebrated speech:

“While we leave slavery to the care of the states where it exists, let us inflexibly direct the policy of the government to circumscribe its limits and favor ITS ULTIMATE EXTINGUISHMENT.  Let those who have this misfortune entailed upon them, instead of contriving how to maintain an equilibrium that never had existence, consider carefully how at some time – it may be ten, or twenty, or even fifty years hence – by some means, by all means of their own and WITH OUR AID, WITHOUT SUDDEN CHANGE OR VIOLENT ACTION they may bring about the emancipation of labor, and its restoration to its just dignity and power in the state.”

More than eight years elapsed after the delivery of this speech before Mr. Seward mad his well-abused exposition of the “irrepressible conflict.”  His mind, meanwhile, had undergone no change, except to acquire increased confidence in the universal triumph of freedom throughout our national borders.  A single quotation will sufficiently illustrate his views of the methods by which this triumph will be achieved:

“It remains to say on this point only one word to guard against misapprehension.  If these states are to again become universally slaveholding, I do not pretend to say with what violations of the Constitution that end shall be accomplished.  On the other hand, while I do confidently believe and hope that my country will yet become a land of universal freedom, I DO NOT EXPECT THAT IT WILL BE MADE SO OTHERWISE THAN THROUGH THE ACTION OF THE SEVERAL STATES, CO-OPERATING WITH THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT, AND ALL ACTING IN STRICT CONFORMITY WITH THEIR RESPECTIVE CONSTITUTIONS.”

We submit that we have clearly established to position which we undertook to maintain, namely, that the new scheme for breaking down the state governments of the South for the purpose of bringing slavery within the control of Congress is not Republicanism.  Whatever may be its merits or its disadvantages, it flies in the teeth, not only of the Chicago platform, but of the most advanced views which have ever been accepted by the most radical wing of the Republican party. – {New York World.

– Published in The Burlington Weekly Hawk-Eye, Burlington, Iowa, Saturday, March 8, 1862, p. 1

It is said that when . . .

. . . the Union gun-boats approached Clarksville a forest of White flags were flying; and that the more prominent and active Secessionists had the greatest number of flags on their houses.

– Published in The Burlington Weekly Hawk-Eye, Burlington, Iowa, Saturday, March 8, 1862, p. 1

Burning and Destroying

Some talk is had upon the street corners as to the policy best to be pursued in case the enemy advance upon the city and the country, and seem likely to capture the city.  The Federal forces are yet a great distance from us, and we hope and believe they will never be able to reach here.  Certainly they will not if the whole people arouse in their might and present a solid breast against the invaders.  The movement in progress here aims to stir up the people to this universal resistance, and it seems probably that it will be successful.

The talk upon the corners is not always remarkably sensible.  Men who spend their time in dilating their lungs at such places are very often not the most wise, calm and brave sort of characters.  They are apt to talk large and act small.  They often cloak over a craven heart under stout words.  Often, too, their counsels spring from panic stricken hearts, though they wear the color and take the shape of being the offspring of courage and patriotism.

Certainly we prefer to follow the advice or commands of our chosen and lawful leaders as to the best modes of conducting the war.  It is the business, and duty, and right of the military chiefs to plan and direct the proper measures in the exigency.  If they say fight, we say fight; if they say retreat, we acquiesce, however painful it may be, if they say tear up the railroads, so say we; if they say burn the bridges, burn them, if they order the country to be laid waist, execute the order; if they command the city to be laid to ashes, lay the city in ashes and plow up its foundations, and sow salt over them.  It is the right of the military chiefs to give such orders and cause them to be executed.  The law of the land, the civil law read out of books and administered by the courts, holds them blameless for such orders and acts.

But street corner orators, and groggery-alley haunters, and whisky-inflamed patriots, and panic-struck cravens are not intrusted with any such right or authority; nor are even the most sensible and excellent of private citizens.  If they venture to usurp or perpetrate any of these acts, the law has a name for them, and the statute book provides for their treatment.  Felons is the name, and the act is arson, a crime which is punished by imprisonment in the penitentiary not less than five nor more than twenty-one years.  Arson is the willful burning of any house or out-house, in the country, or the setting fire to or burning of any house or building in any city or town.  Private persons are not allowed to do these acts, no matter how laudable they may think their purpose.  Nor can a man excuse himself from the consequences of the crime, even though he sets on fire his own buildings, if by so doing he jeopards the building of another.  And besides, the criminal offense such person makes himself liable in a civil action for the value of any building of another which he cause to be burned by the setting on fire his own house.

Obviously, it may be very wise and altogether right to burn a town upon which an enemy is advancing; but quite as plainly is it, that it will never do to allow any person who chooses to do these things.  It is not a power entrusted to any and everybody.  It is not certain that any and everybody is wise, and prudent, and patriotic.  Any and everybody may claim to be so; but any and everybody’s talk is not a very safe ground on which to trust a power of this kind.

Acts of this extreme character may become a military necessity.  Such was the case of Moscow, famed in the history of Napoleon.  Moscow is in the heart of the Russian Empire.  It stands on North latitude in the 56th parallel, the same as the central region of Labrador in North America.  Of course this is an extreme winter climate, though Moscow is not as cold as the same latitude on the eastern slope of this continent.  Besides, Moscow was some seven hundred miles from the western frontier of Russia, the nearest point to a country friendly to Napoleon.  In that day, the year 1812, there were no railroads or steamers, or in that region of Russia any rivers, for the easy or speedy transportation of any army.  So that Napoleon, to get from Moscow out of Russia to a friendly country, had a line of about 700 miles over which his army must march on feet, and an average of 18 or 20 miles per day, in case he was forced to retreat.  Over so long a line, and during mid-winter, and through a hostile country, such retreat would inevitably be fatal.  The Russian soldiers were inured to the climate. – The French army were of many nations, most of them of countries having mild climates, and were unable to bear the rigor of the Russian climate.  Hence, the policy of the Russians was to force Napoleon to retreat during the winter.  This could be done by depriving the French army of shelter and food.

To burn Moscow and desolate the country around, accomplished both – left the French without food and without shelter.  Count Rastopchin was the Governor of Moscow, and Kutusoff was the General-in-Chief of the Russian army.  The battle of Borodino was fought and lost by Kutusoff, seventy miles west of Moscow.  As he retreated before the French, he devastated the country for several miles on each side of the line of his march; and upon approaching the city moved several divisions of his army through it, and, at the point of the bayonet, drove the citizens out of the walls, and far off into the country.

Napoleon entered the city on the 16th of September.  The day after his entrance, the city was set on fire in several places by felons, that Rastopochin had turned out of prison for the purpose; and seven-eights of the houses laid in ashes.  Three hundred thousand Russians were driven from the city, of whom one hundred thousand perished in the fields, of starvation, freezing and disease – men, women, children – old and young, male and female.

About the middle of October, Napoleon took up the line of retreat.  He could find nothing to eat, nor any shelter for his soldiers.  Very soon the rigors of winter set in.  Of that grand army of 500,000 men which entered Russia on the first of July, a wretched fragment of 40,000 men crossed the frontier upon the retreat out, about the middle of December.

The Russian policy was wise and effective.  It was so because Napoleon was seven hundred miles distant from the nearest friendly point – because his army could not live in tents – because he could not procure food at that distance from the country friendly to him – and because the Russian army though inferior in regular warfare, was greatly superior in numbers and was able to surround him in Moscow, and to cut off all attempts of foraging parties into the country around.  Such were reasons and such the policy of burning Moscow. – {Memphis Avalanche.

– Published in The Burlington Weekly Hawk-Eye, Burlington, Iowa, Saturday, March 8, 1862, p. 1

The Pride of Wealth and Lust for Power

FOSTERED BY THE COTTON MONOPOLY, THE CAUSE OF THE REBELLION – TWO CLASSES OF SLAVEHOLDERS – ONE FOR THE UNION – KING COTTON AN INSULT TO GREAT BRITAIN AND FRANCE, AND A CONSPIRACY AGAINST THE COMMERCIAL WORLD.

TO ABRAHAM LINCOLN, President of the United States:

Respected Sir:  I propose to consider in this Letter the causes which have led to impending Rebellion, and to show the advocates of emancipation that they have every reason to be satisfied with the progress that operation is making.

The cause or causes of the rebellion may be summed up in the single phrase, Pride of Wealth and Lust of Power.  These are not peculiar to the South, but have their influence in the North as well.  North and South they pervade, with honorable exceptions, those classes of society which find means to live and enrich themselves without manual labor.  North as well as South the feelings of these classes revolt against a Government controlled by the toiling millions, and would overthrow it if they could.  In the North the attempt would be hopeless, and the aristocratic classes quietly acquiesce in things as they are.  In the cotton region of the South the laborers have no political rights, and the aristocratic classes govern in all that relates to local affairs.  But they are not content with that. – Their pride revolts at association in any government, however mild and beneficent, in which laboring men participate directly or indirectly.  To get rid of such a government, though it has been the chief source of all their prosperity, is the object of the present rebellion.  The avowed design of the South Carolina leaders is the organization of a community composed of gentlemen and laborers, in which the gentlemen shall be the masters and the laborers their slaves. – To this end they were, before the rebellion broke out, avowedly in favor of re-opening the African slave trade and have since submitted with a bad grace to a restriction in the Confederate constitution, dictated by an apprehension that it would not be safe at present so far to outrage the feelings of the civilized world.

But there is a considerable class of slaveholders, especially in the border slave holding states, who do not entertain this antipathy to labor. – It is composed of men of moderate means owning but few slaves.  They are the self-made men, whose industry and economy have enabled them to purchase one or more slaves, and they may often be seen at work in the same field with their own negroes.  They do not sympathize with cotton, rice, and sugar planters, who reckon their slaves by the hundreds, and who never put their own hands to the plow, the hoe, or the axe.  These small slaveholders, numerically probably more numerous than the richer class, have no repugnance to being associated in a Government controlled in part by the laboring men of the North, and they are generally faithful to the Constitution and the Union.  Slavery does not make them rebels.

Cotton is a more prolific element than slavery in generating the “pride of wealth and lust for power” which have produced the rebellion, tho’ both have co-operated.  Had cotton, like wheat and corn, been a product of the North as well as the South, its cultivation would not have been a source of inordinate wealth to Southern planters; for the free labor of the North would then have been brought into direct competition with the slave labor of the South., and the price of the article would have been reduced to a moderate profit.  But climate has given to the South a monopoly of this culture, and it is a monopoly not at all dependent on the existence of slavery.  It would still exist as effectually as it does now if slavery were swept out of existence, and the commercial effect would probably in that event be an enhancement of the price.

The invention of the cotton gin and improvements in manufacturing machinery so cheapened the preparation and manufacture of cotton as to bring it into competition, under most favorable conditions, with every other article used in clothing the human family, and the demand for it so rapidly increased that production could not keep up with it.  The consequence was an increase in the price of the raw material until it has reached a point far above that of any article which can be brought in competition with it in the markets of the world.  This is not the effect of slavery, but in its causes, though not in its effects, it is entirely independent of that institution.  But, by this intervention of the demand for cotton, the slaveholders in South Carolina and a few other States were enabled to employ their negroes in a species of culture peculiar to their climate, the profits of which could not be lessened by general competition.  Though there has been a prodigious increase of production, the consumption has fully kept pace with it, and up to the breaking out of the rebellion, in no part of the earth for the last thirty years, and in no period of history, have the profits of agricultural labor been so great as in cotton growing regions of the United States.  But these profits would have been as great, if not greater, had the Southern production, as is the Northern manufacture, been the proceeds of hired free instead of slave labor.

With the immense profits of the monopoly the cotton planters became intoxicated, and thought that, by means of their cotton, they could rule the world.  “Cotton is King,” they exclaimed; and through his power they aspired to break up the Union and compel Great Britain and France to aid them in the fratricidal operation.  It has seemed strange to me that the rulers of those nations have not seen in this rebellion, or rather in the means by which the leaders proposed to compass success, an insult to their sovereignty and a conspiracy against the commercial world.  Openly they say to those proud nations: “We have the power and intend to use it, by withholding our cotton, to compel you to become our allies under penalty of riot and rebellion among the operatives in your own dominions.”  If they have any such power it is the interest of the world it should be broken, and one would think that the sagacious Napoleon, and the proud Palmerston, instead of meditating their recognition, would say to them: “Lay down your arms, and not only give us your cotton, but restore to us the market of an united and peaceful country, without which your raw material will be comparatively of little value.”

AMOS KENDALL.

February 19, 1862.

– Published in The Burlington Weekly Hawk-Eye, Burlington, Iowa, Saturday, March 8, 1862, p. 1