Those handcuffs.
A distinguished minister of this city has written to a friend in the following strain concerning the Lincoln handcuffs:‘ "Nothing that has yet been done by the North has so deeply moved my indignation. A young minister, who was silenced in Alexandria by Federal authority, has just reached this county, (Bedford.). He says there is no doubt the design was to take prisoners and arrest private citizens, handcuff them, and march them in the front of the battle for their own protection. The design was infamous. It could never enter into hearts not bereft of every emotion of chivalry and self-respect. It is positively fiendish. It must move the South to the most united, determined, and heroic resistance that the world has ever seen. My arms were not made to wear handcuffs; nor shall they, while God gives me strength to resist. I believe the thirty thousand handcuffs will be worth more than thirty thousand volunteers to the South. They must inspire the South with an everlasting loathing of the race that could plan for them a degradation so profound and galling — an injury that we cannot retaliate without sacrificing our character in the estimation of the civilized world.
"Poor Scott! I learn he has been superseded Withered are his laurels. Yet he did not reach the lowest point of infamy to which he might have descended. He was, I learn, opposed to the use of the handcuffs. These new implements of war are the invention of the Republicans — Lincoln, and his saintly advisers — the great enemies of slavery. Let them have the honor of it."
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