Yankee Cavalry raids.
If the excitement created by Stoneman's and Streight's marauding and plundering raids should have the effect of inducing our people everywhere to organize in such a manner as to provide against the renewed attempts of the same kind, which cannot fail to be made by our enemies, no victory that we have yet achieved could prove of more essential service to the Confederacy. But in order to stimulate the efforts now being made in that direction, our Government should lose no time in proclaiming its intentions as regards the participants in such raids, whenever caught by our troops or the volunteer organizations now springing up everywhere for home defence. Nothing can be clearer than that these outlaws in uniform should not be dealt with as soldiers or belligerents. To treat them, when captured, as ordinary prisoners, would be but to invite a repetition of similar outrages. As robbers, incendiaries, and murderers they come into our country, and as such they must be shot down, strung up, or set to work in our penitentiaries, like other thieves and assassins. If we fail to do so, we shall incur the contempt and ridicule of the whole world. It will be equivalent to a standing invitation to all the thieves in Yankeedom to come and set fire to our houses, plunder our cities and villages, carry off our negroes, and commit nameless outrages on our defenceless population. Whenever confronted by an armed force they would be only too glad to surrender as prisoners, with the prospect of returning to their hellish work after being exchanged. Thus the two darling objects of the Yankee in this war — to rob the unprotected, and to keep out of the reach of Confederate powder — would be fully secured, and the whole population of the New England States, including their blasphemous preachers and strong minded women of African proclivities would embrace with enthusiasm this newest and most promising of all Yankee "specs." With proper preparations to receive them, every gang of mounted highwaymen that ventures upon Southern ground, can be bagged, their horses and weapons taken from them, and their carcases turned over to the jailor or the hangman. The immediate result of such a mode of dealing with the marauders, if not merely announced by our Government, but actually carried out in every case, would be to throw the wettest of all imaginable blankets on the now prevailing Yankee phrenzy for "cavalry raids," whilst it would stimulate to the utmost every man engaged in the exciting sport of hunting the Jayhawkers.
