The South in Northern hands.
--The veracious
Bennett announces: ‘--In less that six weeks
Richmond will be in our hands."’ It will be in very dirty hands then.
It will be moreover in the hands of the greatest liars in all Christendom, and the most unparalleled braggarts.
It will be in hands that are yet fond with the humiliating surrender of
Macon and
Slidell to
Great Britain--to that British Boy which each and every one of them — the noisy
Bennett at their head — had sworn should be humbled.
We should think that this disgusting game of brag was by this time played out, and that even the audacity of
Bennett, who has predicated the occupation of
Richmond in periods varying from thirty to sixty days, at least fifty times since the beginning of the war, and who threatened that it
Great Britain made any fuss about
Macon and
Slidell, the
United States would overrun and annex
Canada in six weeks, would scarcely be capable of attempting any further impositions upon popular credulity.
But the hardened old reprobate has been long ago dead to all sense of shame.
No one knows better than himself that
Richmond will not be in possession of the
Yankees in six weeks, six months, six years, or six centuries.
The
Yankees once had possession of it and of the whole
South, from the inauspicious moment when the
South permitted itself to enter into the American Union, which, from the time of its formation, has been used to drain the
South of its life blood in the way of trade, and make it a mere commercial vassal and tributary of the
North.
There is not a Southern city, town, or village which has not been in possession of the
Northern merchants and manufacturers since the foundation of the
Government.
Their pedlars made a more successful invasion of the
South as long as fifty years ago than
McClellan's Grand Army, and their hosts of drummers of a more recent date have thrown all the exploits of the pedlars into the shade.
A great Eastern
King was in the habit of reminding himself of his mortality and keeping himself serious and humble by having a skeleton displayed at this banquets, whilst one of his servants proclaimed, ‘"Saladin,
King of
Kings, Saladin must die."’--
We suggest that
McClellan moderate his supreme elation at finding himself in command of the
Grand Army, by procuring, if he can, the skeleton of one of the
Yankee pedlars of the beginning of this century, and also the old cart in which he peddled his wooden clocks, tin wares and other notions, and getting
Greeley, or
Hale, to shout alone that this
Yankee Doodle marched without Hindrance from
Massachusetts to New Orleans, whilst the magnificent Generalissimo of the
Grand Army cannot get twenty five miles South of
Washington.
Let
Bennett observe by the light of these simple facts what a shocking blunder the
North has made in attempting to get possession of the
South by any other means than trade and traffic.
If the
North had stuck to that method of invasion, the whole
South would have been in her possession up to this hour.
Her goods, wares and merchandise would still have filled our stores, her books and literature generally have continued to poison the minds of our population, and
Bennett's
Herald with its dirty list of Personals, its infidel editorials, and its vagabond correspondents have still been abroad in our land.
Through unjust and partial legislation, though Yankee finesse, and in some degree, through our own want of enterprise and energy, we were unequal to cope with the
North in the pursuits of peaceful life, but, in an evil hour, it under took the only branch of business which we were good at,--fighting,--and the consequence is, it has lost in a year of war all it had gained by fifty years of commercial swindling.
Let
Bennett be assured that hereafter the
South will no longer be in Northern hands, either in the way of trade or conquest.
It ought to know by this time that we can fight it to the crack of doom, and become improved and invigorated by the process.
And, so far as commerce is concerned, we should prefer any other nation of the earth to the
North, especially old
England, whose noble and virtuous people are our friends, and whose merchants and traders will hereafter possess all the enormous profits hitherto reaped by the short-sighted and selfish ingrates of the
Northern States.
