The Voice of the patriotic dead.
--We take the following extract from a letter in the Panola Star, which was the last, written composition of that lamented and gallant hero, Captain Alfred Hudson, of Mississippi, who fell in the battle of Sunday, at Shiloh. Let the living among us catch its patriotic and dauntless spirit:‘ Have you any croakers among you? We have a few in the army, and I sometimes hear them say, if this thing and that thing happens we shall be done. Now, that is a wrong spirit, and should not be tolerated. A people represented by such men as fought under the Southern flag at Fort Donelton, can never be conquered. Suppose they drive us down and confine us to the gulf States--we shall fight on! Suppose they take our principal cities and spread themselves over the rivers and along the railroads of the gulf States, our time for the good old-fashioned tactics--(the ambuscade and therifle,) will have just commenced, and we shall fight on !
Suppose our armies are cut up and destroyed in detail, as the British did in South Carolina and Georgia in the War of '76. What there? We will take to the woods and morasses, and tell them that the Marions and Sumters still live in spirit, and with a firm trust in God will battle till liberty is secured. In fine, we will fight old Abe as long as there is a cake of bread left in the South and a man to eat it.
I have alluded to contingencies above, not with any apprehension that they will occur, but to illustrate what should be the final and unalterable determination of our people under any and all trials through which, in God's wisdom, we may be required to pass.
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