The confiscation bill.
We are not surprised at the wholesale character of the Yankee confiscation bill. When it comes to plundering people of their property, Yankee Doodle is at home. If there is any peculiar field where his genius towers above all competition, it is in confiscating. The wolf snuffing up the odors of a flock of sheep never felt so happy and ravenous as Doodle at this blessed moment. Oh, the joys of confiscation Burning and bloodshed are good in their way, but the delights of murder and robbery are nothing to those of confiscation. Every acre that we own, every horse and mule, every house and barn, every agricultural implement, and every article of household furniture, are to become Yankee Doodle's. All of us who have helped to defend our country, in either a military or civil capacity, all who have given aid and comfort in any way to the rebellion — and who has not?--are to be turned out of house and home, while Doodle is to cock his legs over our fire places, short hallelujahs in our churches, and abolish slavery by whipping the negroes to death, if they do not kill themselves by hard work in six months after they have fallen into his hands.We had supposed that the days of the Goths and Vandals belonged to the past, but they have been "resurrected" again with a vengeance in this nineteenth century. This is no more figure of speech. The confiscation bill proves that it is a literal verity. This, and only this, is the interpretation of the whole war. The hungry population of the North, always pressing fiercely upon the means of subsistence, must have an outlet, where it can grass in green pastures and by still rivers — This they have found in the sunny South, and sooner or later they would have found a pretext for invasion, if no such thing as slavery had ever existed. The war debt affords a convenient instrumentality for carrying out their purposes, and, if they can succeed, we are to be skinned as thoroughly as ever a butcher skinned carcase for the market.
It is this object, and this alone, which gives vigor, unity and persistency to the Yankee war. It is not the "go-lorious Union;" it is not military glory; it is pounds, shillings and pence. If they can conquer us, they mean to make us pay every cent of the expense, and more besides. They intend to elbow us out of everything we have upon the face of the earth, and to make their eternal fortunes out of our ruin. This is a tangible and practical object, which fits inexactly to the comprehension, the tastes, and the necessities of our invaders. The dullest understanding among them can perceive the uses of war with such a purpose. The whole war is a piece of machinery, a grand manufacturing establishment for the purpose of making national and individual fortunes. This is the tempting bait which gives keenness to their appetites and ferocity to their actions. But ought it not also to act upon us with equal power? Ought we not to be as resolute in defending our property as they in plundering it? Ought we not to feel and to act uyon the sentiment that we have no earthly hope of anything upon earth but in the most determined and eternal resistance?
