A friend 'down South' has kindly sent us a number of '_De Bow's Review,
Industrial Resources_, etc.,' as its elegantly worded title-page
proclaims. It is true that the number in question is none of the
freshest, it having appeared at Charleston, in December last. Yet, as a
Southern magazine published during the war, and full of war matter, it
is replete with interest.
Its first article on Privateers and Privateersmen, by George Fitzhugh of
Virginia--as arrogant, weak, and Sophomorical as Southern would-be
'literary' articles usually are--is written in a vein of reasoning so
oddly illogical as to almost induce suspicion as to the sanity of the
author. Let the reader take, for instance, the following extracts:
'To show how untenable and absurd are the doctrines of the writers
on the laws of war, we will cite the instance of pickets. According
to their leading principle that in war 'only such acts of hostility
are permissible as weaken the enemy and advance and promote the
ends and purposes of the war,' pickets are the very men to be
killed, for the death of one of them may effect a surprise and
victory, and do more injury to the enemy than the killing of a
thousand men in battle. According to their doctrine, it is
peculiarly proper and merciful to shoot pickets; yet they propose
to interpolate on the laws of war a provision that pickets shall
not be shot. This provision is, in accordance with our philosophy,
founded on Christian principles and the dictates of healthy
humanity, for pickets are not active belligerents, and can oppose
no force to the stealthy attacks made on them by unseen enemies. To
kill a picket is like fighting an unarmed man, a child or a woman.
It is eminently right according to the selfish and silly philosophy
of writers on national law, but inhuman, and therefore wrong,
according to our philosophy, which is founded on Christian
injunctions and natural feelings.
'Yet, as a matter of necessity, we would encourage the shooting of
pickets. We of the South are accustomed to the use of arms, are
individually brave and self-reliant, can creep upon their pickets
and shoot them in the night, and thus carry out our defensive
policy of exhausting in detail the superior numbers of the invading
North. We must be conquered and subjugated unless we take advantage
of all our peculiarities of habits, customs, localities, and
institutions. We have to make a choice of evils; either shoot
pickets, or by neglecting to do so, cut off one of our most
available arms of defense. We must fight the 'devil with fire.' Our
enemy professes no allegiance to the laws of morality nor to the
laws of God. We must deal with them as Moses dealt with the people
of Canaan, so long as they invade our territory. But we are not
God's chosen people, not his instruments to punish Canaanites, and
we will not follow them when they retreat to their barren Northern
homes. There a just and avenging God is already punishing them for
their crimes. Left to themselves, and our real enemies--those of
the North-east--will perish, for they have little means of support
at home, and have not learned to avail themselves of those means,
trusting that a generous and confiding South would continue to feed
and clothe them.
'In old countries, where there are few trees, forests, or other
hiding-places, and where the country people are unused to firearms,
an invaded country gains little by shooting pickets; but in a new,
rough country like ours, where pickets can be approached furtively,
and where all the country people are first-rate marksmen, there is
no better means of harassing and exhausting an invading army than
by cutting off its outposts in detail.
'It is the obvious interest of the North to make the persons of
pickets sacred; and equally _our_ obvious policy to shoot them down
at every opportunity.'
In the midst of these slightly confused arguments on war, the writer
suddenly introduces a very out of place eulogy of '_De Bow's Review,
Industrial Resources_, etc.,' as a periodical 'which occupies a much
wider range than any English periodical, and which, _as an
Encyclopedia_, would be more valuable than any other Review, were equal
pains and labor bestowed upon its articles.' We suspect this bit to be
office-made--it has the heavy, clumsy ring of the great cracked bell of
De Bow. For instance:
'I know, Mr. Editor, you intend, so soon as the war is over, to
enlarge the _Review_, without increasing the subscription-price
... and then if Southern patronage ceases to be bestowed chiefly
on the flimsy and immoral literature of the North, and Southern
pens cease to prostitute themselves for pay by ministering to the
vile and sensual literary appetites of the Yankees, then, we say,
this _Review_ will rank with the ablest for ability, and far above
them for usefulness. But this result can be attained only when we
cease to be Yankee-worshipers, and when the semi-traitorous
imbeciles of the Virginia Convention and of Kentucky are remembered
only to be detested and despised. Already hundreds of scientific
and philosophic minds who have thrown off the debasing influence of
Yankee authority have contributed learned and valuable articles to
your pages.'
Unfortunately the character of De Bow as a deliberate and accomplished
liar, and the exposure of his infamous falsification of statistics, have
somewhat sunk the character of his '_Review, Industrial Resources_,
etc.,' out of Dixie, where, only, due honor is paid to those who are
like him
----'for profound
And solid lying much renowned.'
'Art. II.' or Article the Second, in this magazine, 'which only needs
equal pains and labor' [we might add paper, ink, and a Yankee Grammar
and Dictionary] to be made equal to 'any other Review'--treats of 'The
Bastile--Tyranny, Past and Present.' All the doleful stories of
prisoners of earlier or later ages, in the Bastile, including much
sentimental balderdash, are drawled out by a very stupid and would-be
effective writer, for the purpose of proving that the imprisonment of
political offenders and captives by the North is precisely on a par with
that of 'Bastiling' them, and that Abraham Lincoln is only a revival of
the worst kings of France in an American form. We of the North have,
according to this writer, 'reached the goal of despotism at a single
leap. In a few months the government has achieved ETERNAL INFAMY.' We
commend to the reader the following superbly Southern conclusion:
'With all these evils comes the inevitable Bastile. It is an
inseparable part of the system. A philosophical Cuvier, from one
act or condition of tyranny, will supply the rest of the organism.
Wherever despotism exists, we look for the Bastile as naturally as
we do for the character of a robber in an Italian story. Like the
ponderous step of the statue of the commander in the _Don Juan_ of
Molière, its approach is audible above civil commotion, above the
shrieks of frenzied orators, the howlings of a demoralized clergy,
and the sound of battle. It brings with it the destruction of civil
liberty, and darkens all the perspective.'
To us, to whom the approach of despotism with all its horrors is not
quite so apparent as the heavy footfall 'in the _Don Juan_ of Molière,'
this all sounds as if Dixie would very much like to have the little
privilege of keeping all the prisoners to itself. Nothing is said, by
the way, of Southern Bastiles--of tobacco-factories, in which mere boys
are allowed to die of wounds in utter solitude, to which officers come
for the purpose of spitting upon and kicking the 'Yanks,' and where
sentinels in wanton fiendishness were allowed to daily shoot through the
windows at those within. No word is spoken of officers thrown into a
common dungeon with negroes and thieves, nor is there any allusion to
the ingenious system of keeping Northern prisoners as long as possible,
so that they may die and thereby diminish the numbers of the enemy, in
accordance with the Southern plan of Fitzhugh, already cited, as 'our
defensive policy of exhausting _in detail_ the superior numbers of the
invading North.'
'Article III.' gives us a rehash of the views of Dr. Cartwright on 'The
Serpent, the Ape, and the Negro.'
'Article IV.' by E. Delony, of Louisiana, is the great political gun of
the magazine, and inquires: 'What of the the Confederacy--the Present
and the Future?' It is of course full of hope, bluster, and self-praise.
'Our armies,' says Delony, 'are not like the miserable hirelings of
Lincoln--the scum of infamy and degradation--hunted up from the dens,
sewers, and filthy prisons of the North, with the low vandalism of
foreign importations, picked up wherever they can be found. Yet such are
the creatures our brave soldiers have to meet. _Our_ armies are
composed of men who have not volunteered for pay, nor for food or
clothing!'
Since copying this paragraph, it was recalled to us--within a few
hours--by meeting some half-dozen of the 'scum of sewers' in question,
in the persons of half-a-dozen young gentlemen, privates in a
Massachusetts regiment, several of them college graduates--all of them
sons of wealthy citizens and gentlemen. It would be interesting to
ascertain, taking man for man, what proportion of the Southern and
Northern armies are respectively able to read, or are otherwise
personally familiar with the decencies and proprieties of civilized
life. From this assumption of superiority Mr. Delony argues victory,
asks, 'What about the peace?' and inquires if the Federal Government
will offer to negotiate for it?
'We can _propose_ no terms, but we must _demand_ them. We desire
nothing that is not right and just, and we will submit to nothing
that is wrong. But no peace will be acceptable to the people that
permits the Lincoln Government to hold its Abolition orgies and
fulminate its vile edicts upon slave territory. Much valuable
property of our citizens has been destroyed, or stolen and carried
off by the invaders; this should be accounted for, and paid. The
Yankees were shrewd enough to cheat us out of the navy, but we must
have half of the war-vessels and naval armament in possession of
the North at the commencement of this war. We should enter into no
commercial alliances or complications with them, but assume the
entire control of our commercial policy and regulations with them,
to be modified at our own discretion and pleasure. They have closed
against us all navigation and trade on the Mississippi, Missouri,
and other rivers; it is our right and duty hereafter so to regulate
the navigation of these streams as may best conform to our own
interests. It can not be expected that we should permit the free
navigation of the Lower Mississippi to the West after they have
closed it against us above, without the most stringent regulations.
There is no palliation in the pretense that the blockade above was
a war measure; they can not so claim it unless we had been
acknowledged as belligerents, and hence they have forfeited all
right to free navigation as a peace measure. If, then, permission
be given to the Free States of the West to navigate the Lower
Mississippi, it should be under such restrictions as to afford a
commensurate revenue to the confederacy, and the strictest rules
regulating the ingress and egress of passengers, officers, and
hands. The West is learning us how to do without her, and we thank
her for it; we shall have but little need of her produce, as we
shall soon have a plentiful supply among our own people. An
absolute separation from all the North, with the sole and
independent control of all regulations with its people, are our
best and safest terms of peace.'