Our enemies at home.
What is it which makes the Yankee character so adions and repugnant to the Southern mind? --What is the prominent vice which stands out an alps among the other vices, too numerous to mention, of the Yankee people? It is plainly and palpably the intense greed for gain, the passion for wealth, the servile and idolatrous worship of the Almighty Dollar. Throughout all lands the name of Yankee and the thing Mammon worship are in inseparably associated. It is needless to discuss the question whether the reputation of the Yankee for being the most avaricious and extortionate of man kind be well deserved. We know there are noble exceptions to it, but, on the whole, it cannot be denied that their intense eagerness for the acquisition of money has never been surpassed, and that it is this, above all other evil traits, which, long before the Union was dissolved, gave the Yankee an evil name in the South. The Southern character, whatever its shortcomings, was never in better days addicted to the vice of covetousness. Its fault, if fault it could be called, was in the opposite directions,--liberality verging upon extravagance. It despised and abhorred from its inmost soul the have greed of gold. Everything combined to foster lie antagonism to Yankee character in this respect, its Cavalier descent, its agricultural made of life, the plenty and case of its condition. The Yankee themselves admitted, and the whole world admired the proverbial hospitality and unselfish contempt of gain which distinguished the Southern people.Has the fine gold become dim? Are the people of the South losing their ancient character? Are they prepared to imitate, aye, to surpass, the Yankees in that very feature of Yankee character which has always been most hostile and execrable to the Southern nature? We cannot believe it; but it is undeniable, that the speculators and extortionist of the South, whose name is Legion, are bringing into doubt and derision the most illustrious of her virtues, and surpassing the most extortionate and avaricious of Yankees in that vice which has made Yankeeism odious to the South and all civilized mankind. It is no exaggeration to say that the greed of gain now so prevalent in the Southern Confederacy is more wicked and infamous than the same vile passion in Yankee hearts. In ordinary times the debasing appetite may be indulged without injury to the vital interests of the community. In Yankee land, even in such a war as this, the speculators and extortioners may ply their plundering trade without bringing into peril the liberties of their country and the honor of their firesides. The blessed Union may slide, and the Stars and Stripes be no longer omnipotent over all mention, but the Yankee will still save from the wreck his State, his institutions, his family his inventiveness, and his impudence. But the speculators and extortioners of the South are exposing to peril the liberties, the property, the happiness, the rights, the honor of every man, woman, and child in their country. They are making war upon our struggling and toiling Government making war upon our glorious and gallant people, making war upon the interests of human liberty in this and every other clime. They are rendering more aid and influence than all the combined armies of Yankeedom to accomplish the avowed purposes of this war, viz: the reduction of the Southern States to the condition of Territories, and of the Southern people to the condition of vessals; the confiscation of every Southern estate; the beggary of every Southern citizen; the ignominious death or sternal exile of the best and purest men in the Southern Confederacy. All this is to the accomplished through seas of blood — the blood of our noble heron, men of whom the world is not worthy; through the desolation of fields, through the flames of burning houses, through the defilement of our innocent homes, through pangs of want and the internal horrors of servile insurrection. All those agencies of hell the speculators and extortioners of the South are rendering score aid to accomplish than the anaconda in all his strength could accomplish. Hooker, Rosecrans, Hunter, Banks and the whole tribe of Yankee General latmos are harmless and amiable reptiles compared to the speculators and extortioners in our own bosom. We appeal to the moral sense, the patriotism, the honor, the instinct of self-preservation in Southern hearts, to put down this horrid greed of gain, or we shall perish, just as we are about crossing the narrow Jordan between us and the Canal of our liberty and independence.
