Federal duplicity.
Both Rosecrans and Burnside have in their orders attached the penalty of death to the wearing of Federal uniforms by Confederate soldiers, and it was declared that all of such soldiers captured with such uniforms upon them should be subject to capital punishment.In the recent raid by Averill his advanced guard was clothed in Confederate uniforms. They appeared first in the villages and along the roads as they marched, and our people were deceived, imagining that our own forces were approaching. They were soon, however, undeceived, and surprised by the main force, who proceeded to appropriate to themselves all that they could lay their hands upon, or that was at all desirable.
This act of duplicity on the part of the Yankees is entirely in accordance with their ethics. They are the only people of modern times who boldly avow and practice the rule that the end justifies the means. It is right to destroy all the provisions of the country, whether owned by private citizens or the Government. (See Butler's boast of destroying the many thousands of pounds of bacon, and the thousands of barrels of corn in the recent Yankee raid to Brandon.) It is right to carry off all the labor of the country. It is right to enlist and arm the slaves of the South against their masters. It is right to burn up the agricultural implements of the country, so that there shall be no more planting, no more harvesting, and the people shall die of Famine. It is right to rob the private dwellings in mid winter of all the clothing and all the bed covering of the people inhabiting them. It is right to deprive the land of all means of subsistence so that the army shall be dispersed and the population shall be scattered and in great part perish, and be succeeded by the hungry race of plundering invaders, which the Yankee Government has set upon the South to complete the work of desolation and destruction which it premeditated at the beginning of the war, and which it has by degrees developed until it is now no longer disguised or veiled from the eyes of the world. And all these horrors — all this destruction — all these inhuman acts — are considered expedients of "military necessity" in the war of subjugation of the South--all measures proper and timely in the crusade to break down the spirit of the Southern people and reduce them to slavish submission to the North. There is no horror in all the list of horrors — no crime in the catalogue of national atrocities which these besotted Northern people and their Government will not consider justifiable in the prosecution of their purpose of conquering the South and annihilating its national existence.
In this catalogue of crimes against mankind, Averill's little device of deceiving the localities he visited by clothing his advance in Confederate uniforms is a small offence. It is only noticeable for its inconsistency with Rosecrans and Burnside's brutal orders. Our brave soldiers only wear Yankee uniforms as a matter of necessity. They capture them fairly in the field, and they put them on as a matter of right, as well as a matter of necessity, to protect themselves against the storms and frosts of the season. But the Yankees have no such valid reasons. They have the markets of the world open to them, and they have manufactories abundant at home. They capture little or no clothing from us, and they have a plenty of their own. They adopt our uniform for no other reason than to deceive our people; to make their plundering expeditions the more successful, and the surprise of their arrival to capture desired booty the more complete. If our men deserve death under the circumstances, what punishment are theirs, disguised for these motives, entitled to ?
But what care they ? They have neither a sense of justice nor of Shame ! Nothing but bravery and constancy in the South, with the help of Heaven, can right our wrongs or punish the national duplicity and atrocity of our besotted enemy. A contemplation of these wrongs should but nerve the arms of our people, and give weight and force to every blow they strike.
