The noise and bombast of the Yankee editors over victories, large or small, or oftener over defeats, (for they always have some excuse other than cowardice,) is most remarkable and illaudable. For instance, General Jackson’s army advanced upon Front Royal, and the first Maryland and Wheat’s battalion on our side took prisoners, all but fifteen of the first Maryland and the Vermont cavalry, on the Yankee side. This the Yankee papers most plausibly distorted into a Confederate defeat, as it “placed Jackson in a position from which he cannot escape.” The sequel has proved that Jackson not only escaped, but whipped Banks most completely at Winchester, Fremont at Port Republic, and McDowell and Shields at Cross Keyes. The Yankees are ever bragging about their grand army—the number of their men. While boasting what they are going to do in one breath with this “grand army,” with the next, they call for volunteers.
The Wheeling Intelligencer says: “All the merchants in the city, except one, have taken the oath of allegiance. One physician, enjoying a large practice, gave it up, rather than take the oath.” Nearly all the Virginia merchants had left before the Yankees had the power to offer the insult. The physician, who would not take the oath of allegiance, is Dr. Hughes. The merchants, who did take it, had the alternative of taking the oath or being imprisoned, and lose all their property. It is hard for a man to work all his life, and then to give up all and go to prison, leaving his family destitute. The merchants took the oath under protest. The abolition editor does not state this however, for the object of the Yankees is to deceive, and such a mark of magnanimity would not be in accordance with their character. Nearly all the regiments, which the bogus Pierpont government call Virginia regiments, are filled with Ohio Abolitionists.
July 24th. A lady, in Washington city, sent me the following by the “Underground mail carrier,” saying she “heartily endorsed the words:”
REBELS.
BY A. P. T.
Rebels! ‘tis a holy name!
The name our fathers bore
When batting in the cause of right,
In the dark days of yore.
Rebels! ’tis our family name!
Our father—Washington—
Was the arch-Rebel in the fight,
And gives the name to us, a right
Of father unto son.
Rebels! ’tis our given name!
Our mother—Liberty—
Received the title with her fame
In days of grief, and fear and shame,
When at her breast were we.
Rebels! ’tis our sealed name!
A baptism of blood.
The war-cry and the dire of strife,
The fearful contest, life for life,
The mingled crimson blood.
Rebels! ’tis a patriot name!
In struggles it was given;
We bore it then, when tyrants raved,
And thro’ their curses ’twas engraved
On the Dooms-day Book of Heaven.
Rebels! ’tis our fighting name!
For peace rolls o’er the land,
Until they speak of craven woe,
Until our rights receive a blow
From foe’s or brother’s hand.
Rebels! ’tis our dying name!
For although life is dear,
Yet freemen born, and freemen bred,
We’d rather lie as freemen dead,
Then live in slavish fear.
Then call us Rebels if you will,
We’ll glory in the name;
For bending under unjust laws,
And swearing faith to an unjust cause,
We count a greater shame.
“A perfect love of a man” is Parson Brownlow. The Louisville Journal says: “He has repeatedly assured us that he never swore an oath, never played a card, never took a drink of liquor, never went to the theatre, never attended a horse-race, never told a lie, never broke the Sabbath, never voted the Democratic ticket, never wore whiskers, and never kissed any woman but his wife.” He is a black-hearted traitor, besides being an unprincipled liar.
A Western editor says his paper is located immediately over a recruiting office, and that the fifing and drumming “drives everything out of his head.” What a scampering there must be over his shirt collar!
All the Yankees talk about is “the Union and its laws.” Of all injustice, that is the greatest which goes under the name of law; and of all sorts of tyranny, the forcing of the letter of the law against the equity is the most insupportable.
Many Yankee soldiers have assured me that they entered the army while intoxicated with drink, being victims of the wiles of those who do not scruple to do anything in their mad efforts to conquer the South. Wrong being at the root of their great armies, has caused them so often to bite the dust before inferior numbers:
“Although the ear be deaf, and will not hear,
There is a voice in conscience which appeals