The enemy's latest Schemes.
The enemy falling in all his expedients — his foreign enlistments; his negro regiments; his negro insurrections; his divers proclamations of amnesty, etc., and, above all, in his battles with our Southern troops in the field, has introduced a new piece of strategy in the war. It is Famine. The mills, the corn tribe, the barns, and the substance and support of the people are to be destroyed to starve them into submission to their Yankee masters. The teams and the labor of the country are to be carried off, and the agricultural implements are to be burned that there shall be no more seeding and harvesting.A fitting counterpart to these designs of the Infernal Government at Washington was the plan to massacre the officers of Government here and to sack and destroy this city, as developed in the Dahlgren papers. Had the purposes of the invaders been known to our people no prisoners would have been taken, and that they were not hung up instantly, all that were in our hands, upon reading what those purposes were, is an example of forbearance of a community under the extremest provocation that has hardly a precedent. Whatever is done about this raid and its participants in our hands, it would be madness to suppose any future expedition of the sort towards this city comes with any other purpose than that which lured on the band of cut-throats under Kilpatrick and Dahlgren, Of course every man can answer, and rightly, what should be our policy and duty when such another occasion arises.
But the orders enjoined on the whole route those acts of barbarity which are intended to starve the people. Not only all the mills were to be burned, but everything that could be of service to the rebels was ordered to be destroyed. The acts of these raiders and their orders are only in conformity with the deeds of all the invaders in every part of the country, especially in the last year of the war. There is no way to meet this kind of warfare but by the most summary punishment of every man caught in the act of its prosecution. Every commander under whose authority such deeds are committed should be put to death immediately he is caught and his criminality clearly established. This may check the outrages and compel the enemy to respect the rules of modern warfare. On the other hand it may inaugurate a system of bloody retaliations. Well, let it come ! The enemy has brought on the stage the gaunt and hideous figure of Famine, and the Death's Head will be an appropriate attendant of her ghastly procession.
