The intention which directed the formation of this vast camp was Cruelty.
The system which governed, or rather the want of system which neglected,
each department, whether hospital or commissariat, meant Death. The
evidence against the leaders of the Confederacy is not wanting, neither is
it obscure. It is true that most of the witnesses have perished, or are
fast passing prematurely away; but the chain of circumstantial evidence is
so connected, so apparent, that, unless the faith of humanity changes,
that voice, which Tacitus calls "the conscience of the human race," will,
until the end of time, overwhelm with withering scorn the memory of these
men as the assassins of sedition, rather than the heroes and saints of a
just revolution.
We may search history in vain for a parallel in modern times.
Civilization, in its known vicissitudes, cannot point out a spectacle so
horrible.
The massacre, in hot blood, of the Tartars of the Crimea by Potemkin, will
not compare with this slow, merciless, implacable process of murder by
starvation, and violation of those hygienic laws upon which the principle
of life depends. The fusilades of that saturnalia of blood, the French
Revolution, which swept away whole generations, had the pomp of military
executions, which threw a gleam of brilliancy over the scene, and gave
momentary enthusiasm to the victims. Those great immolations of the
Saracens and Persians by the Tartars were as rapid as the cimeters could
flash. "The fury of ideas," says Lamartine, "is more implacable than the
fury of men; for men have heart, and opinion none. Systems are brutal
forces, which bewail not even that which they crush."
"See," said Timour to the learned men of Aleppo, "I am but half a man, and
yet I have conquered Irak, Persia, and the Indies." "Render glory,
therefore, to God," replied the Mufti of Aleppo, "and slay no one." "God
is my witness," said, with apparent sincerity, the destroyer of so many
millions of men, "that I put no one to death by a premeditated will; no, I
swear to you I kill no one from cruelty, but it is you who assassinate
your own souls."