The burning of Hampton.
We forfeit a considerable amount of very respectable rhetoric upon the upshot of the burning of Hampton by our own forces, instead of the enemy. But it needed not that our invaders should burn that ancient town, to establish their reputation as violators of everything sacred upon our soil. They had already defiled the place, filling the venerated Church with obscene inscriptions, and permitting not even the dead to repose undisturbed in the ancient burial ground. They have subjected our citizens, irrespective of age or sex, to the grossest and most horrible outrages, and conducted a system of rapine unknown in modern warfare. The burning of Hampton by them could not have blackened their characters, while it would have been a wanton act of vandalism, perfectly consistent with the plan of war they avowed and have prosecuted.Hampton burned by our own people, however, may be well accepted by the enemy as an evidence of the readiness of Southern men to sacrifice property, to reduce to ashes venerated and sacred edifices, rather than surrender them for the benefit and advantage of the enemy. This spirit they will find to be universal, should they be able to penetrate further into the country. The people of the South, if they cannot keep back the enemy, will give him a desolate country to traverse. They are as ready to make a heroic sacrifice of all they possess of earthly treasure, as they are to peril their lives in the cause of their liberty and independence.
But the men that burned Hampton are capable of the heroism of repelling our invaders with the odds of three to one, as at Bethel, and to avoid the necessity of laying waste before them, as at Hampton — that town being commanded by that powerful fortress, built for the protection of Virginia, and which ought now to be in her possession.
Hampton was burned to prevent its occupation in the winter by the enemy. Its citizens acquiesce cheerfully in its destruction with this object. Some of them, who were present themselves, set fire to their own buildings.
