The Orpheus C. Kerr Papers, Series 2Newell, R. H. (Robert Henry)
History
The Orpheus C. Kerr Papers, Series 2
Newell, R. H. (Robert Henry)
United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865 -- Fiction
Insanity, my boy, like Charity, so seldom begins at home, that we
sometimes mistake the best kind of sanity for it when we meet the
latter, as a stranger, abroad. The man we call a maniac is frequently
nothing more than a sane man seen through a maniac's spectacles.
But the whole body of Mackerels, sane and insane alike, unite in a
feeling of strong anguish blended with enthusiasm, at the removal of
the beloved General of the Mackerel Brigade. He has been so much a
Father to them all, that they never expected to get a step farther
while he was with them.
There's a piece of domestic philosophy for you, my boy.
When the General heard of his removal, my boy, he said that it was like
divorcing a husband from a wife, who had always supported him, and
immediately let fly the following
FAREWELL ADDRESS.
_Head-quarters of the Army of Accomac,
Foot of the Blue Ridge._
MY CHILDREN:
An order from the Honest Abe divorces us, and gives the command of all
these attached beings to Major-General Wobert Wobinson. (Heartrending
and enthusiastic cheers.)
In parting with you, I cannot express how much I love your dear bosoms.
As an army, you have grown from youth to old age under my care. In you
I have never found doubt nor coldness, nor anything else. The victories
you have won under my command will live in the nation's works of
fiction. The strategy we have achieved, the graves of many unripe
Mackerels, the broken forms of those disabled by the Emancipation
Proclamation--the strongest associations that can exist among
men--still make it advisable that you should vote for me as President
of the United States in 1865. Thus we shall ever be comrades in
supporting the Constitution, and making the Constitution support us.
THE GENERAL OF THE MACKEREL BRIGADE.
[Green Seal.]
It was while this affecting document was being read to the Army, my
boy, that a procession of political chaps with banners and a small
cannon, landed from a boat on Awlkwyet River, and came filing affably
into camp. Only pausing to insult two correspondents of the _Tribune_,
and to fire the cannon so close to a farmhouse that it broke all the
windows, these pleasant chaps at once organized a meeting and gave
orders that all fighting should be postponed till after the session.
The Hon. Mr. X. Stream proceeded to say that he considered Mr. Lincoln
a strictly honest, upright, able, and noble-hearted man (cheers); but
it could not be denied that his Administration was a wretched
failure--a blending of brutal imbecility with hellish despotism. (Much
enthusiasm). While it continued so, everything in the stock-market
would go up--_up_--UP! until the bubble burst. The General of the
Mackerel Brigade had been removed (universal sobbing) but it was only
that he might shine the brighter before a Democratic Convention in 1865.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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