The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862: Devoted to Literature and National Policy.Various
General
The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862: Devoted to Literature and National Policy.
Various
Literature, Modern -- 19th century -- Periodicals; United States -- Politics and government -- 19th century -- Periodicals
The London _Herald_ declares that 'America is a nuisance among nations!'
When they undertake to meddle with us, they will find us one. We would
not leave them a ship on the sea or a seaboard town un-ruined. The whole
world would wail one wild ruin, and there should be the smoke as of
nations, when despotism should dare to lay its hand on the sacred cause
of freedom. For we of the North are living and dying in that cause which
never yet went backward, and we shall prevail, though the powers of all
Europe and all the powers of darkness should ally against us. Let them
come. They do but bring grapes to the wine-press of the Lord; and it
will be a bloody vintage which will be pressed forth in that day, as the
great cause goes marching on.
* * * * *
Let no one imagine that our military draft has been one whit too great.
Our great folly hitherto has been to underrate the power of the enemy.
In the South every male who can bear arms is now either bearing them or
otherwise directly aiding the rebellion. When the sheriffs of every
county in the seceding States made their returns to their Secretary of
War, they reported one million four hundred thousand men capable of
bearing arms. And they have the arms and will use them. It is 'an united
rising of the people,' such as the world has seldom seen.
But then it is _all_ they can do--it is the last card and the _last_
man, and if we make one stupendous effort, we must inevitably crush it.
There is no other course--it is drag or be dragged, hammer or anvil now.
If we do not beat _them_ thoroughly and completely, they will make us
rue the day that ever we were born.
The South is stronger than we thought, and its unity and ferocity add to
its strength. It will never be conciliated--it must be crushed. When we
have gained the victory, we can be what our foes never were to
us--generous and merciful.
* * * * *
A GENTLEMAN of Massachusetts, who has held a position in McClellan's
army that gave him an opportunity to know whereof he speaks, states that
for weeks, while the army on the Peninsula were in a grain-growing
country, surrounded by fields of wheat and oats belonging to well-known
rebels, the Commissary Department was not allowed to turn its cattle
into a rich pasturage of young grain, from the fear of offending the
absent rebel owners, or of using in any way the property of Our Southern
Brethren in arms against us. The result was, that the cattle kept with
the army for the use of our hard-worked soldiers, were penned up, and
half-starved on the forage carried in the regular subsistence trains,
and the men got mere skin and bones for beef.
* * * * *
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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