March 18, 1863, The Charleston Mercury
The presses of the United States still rely upon the superior physical power of the North to subject the Southern States. In their view, our conquest is a simple affair of arithmetic. As eighteen is greater than eight, therefore eighteen millions of people must subdue eight. They ignore all moral influences. They ignore God. Material and sensual, they regard a struggle for liberty and independence as an affair of mechanics, in which a longer lever or a stronger pulley will lift the load. So corrupted are they by the prosperity which they wrung from the South, that they seem to have forgotten history – their own history, and the history of the people that are striving to subdue. FREDERICK the Great, with but five millions of inhabitants in Prussia, in a seven years’ war, beat back Austria, Russia and France combined – each of them being five times as great numerically as Prussia. In the Revolution of 1776 we were but two millions and a half of people, against the most powerful nation, by land and sea, at that time in Europe. Since this war began we have repulsed the Northern armies in every pitched battle, although they have had their own time for their preparations and superior numbers. Yet they still argue that, because they are numerically greater than we are, they must subdue us.
BONAPARTE very truly observed that the morale of an army is three-fourths of its strength. An army is not the mere bones, flesh and blood which compose it. It consists of men – with all the passions, feelings, and motives which actuate men. Men may enter an army simply to obtain bread, which is the case with one-half of the present army of the United States; and when brought into battle they will fight, perhaps, under circumstances, very bravely. Men may enter an army on a speculation of robbery. They want the country they invade either as a source of future gain or of present occupancy. A large portion of the United States army really believed, when they invaded the South, that they were only going down to select fat farms; another portion came to coerce us as their future tributaries. But there is one thing all robbers prefer to robbery – and that is life. In the game of robbery, there is a reasonable limit to all adventures. But what are these motives for conquering us, compared with those which must actuate the people of the Confederate States in defending themselves? The land invaded is their land. The property to be appropriated is their property. The homes to be desecrated, or given to the flames, are their homes. The butchery and murder to be perpetrated is of them and their children. Country, property, home, all we love or live for, is put up at every battle as the price of victory. Is it at all surprising that, in such a contest, the Southern people should be invincible? Why should any man in the South survive one day the subjugation of the South to Yankee domination? Death is a thousand times preferable to the doom which awaits him and his. Our ruthless and bloody foes have left us in no doubt as to their designs. They have written them upon their Statute Books; they have proclaimed them to the world. The deeds of BUTLER and MITCHELL are but faint glimmering shadows of the horrible and unspeakable atrocities they meditate for our torture and humiliation, should they succeed in subjugating us. How can the motives of the robber or mercenary arm him with the same intrepidity and desperation in battle, which, under such circumstances, must nerve the arm of the Southern man?
Whilst ignoring all moral influences, our savage foes also ignore God. It is true that we sometimes see proclamations from their authorities, setting apart certain days for thanksgiving and praise to God for some successful murder of our people. There can be no more striking repudiation of the Deity than a denial of His attributes. How can a God of justice and holiness accept the thanksgiving and praise for the success of the robbers and murderers of an unoffending, innocent people? But in their presses they make no reference to God whatever in their meditated slaughter of us. Victory is a simple affair – of so many more men against so many fewer men. – God, with them, does not reign; but Mammon and Moloch. Material, infidel and bloody as they are – it is our task to scourge them from our land, and make them the hissing scorn and detestation of the world.