“‘There are many honorable exceptions in the South, but dishonesty is the rule. The latter is but the development of latent rascality. The rebellion has afforded a pretext merely for the swindling operations. The parties previously acted honestly, only because that was the best policy. The sifting process that may now be conducted will be of advantage to Northern merchants in the future. The present losses will be fully made up by subsequent gains.’
“We have been requested to copy the following reply to this tirade from one of our most prominent mercantile houses, Messrs. Goodrich & Co.:
“‘NEW ORLEANS, May 24, 1861.
“‘CINCINNATI GAZETTE.—We were handed, through a friend of ours, your issue of the 18th inst., and attention directed to an article contained therein, in which you are pleased to particularize us out of a large number of highly respectable merchants of this and other Southern cities as repudiators, swindlers, and other epithets, better suited to the mouths of the Wilson Regiment of New York than from a once respectable sheet, but now has sunk so low in the depths of niggerdom, that it would take all the soap in Porkopolis and the Ohio River to cleanse it from its foul pollution.
“‘We are greatly indebted to you for using our name in the above article, as we deem it the best card you could publish for us, and may add greatly to our business relations in the Confederate States, which will enable us in the end to pay our indebtedness to those who propose cutting our throats, destroying our property, stealing our negroes, and starving our wives and children, to pay such men in times of war. You may term it rascality, but we beg leave to call it patriotism.
“‘Giving the sinews of war to your enemies have ever been considered as treason.—Kent.
“‘Now for ‘repudiating.’ We have never, nor do we ever expect to repudiate any debt owing by our firm. But this much we will say, never will we pay a debt due by us to a man, or any company of men, who is a known Black Republican, and marching in battle array to invade our homes and firesides, until every such person shall be driven back, and their polluted footsteps shall, now on our once happy soil, be entirely obliterated.
“‘We have been in business in this city for twenty years, have passed through every crisis with our names untarnished or credit impaired, and would at present sacrifice all we have made, were it necessary, to sustain our credit in the Confederacy, but care nothing for the opinions of such as are open and avowed enemies. We are sufficiently known in this city not to require the indorsement of The Cincinnati Gazette, or any such sheet, for a character.
“‘The day is coming, and not far distant, when there will be an awful reckoning, and we are willing and determined to stand by our Confederate flag, sink or swim, and would like to meet some of The Gazette’s editors vis-à-vis on the field of blood, and see who would be the first to flinch.
“‘Our senior partner has already contributed one darkey this year to your population, and she is anxious to return, but we have a few more left which you can have, provided you will come and take them yourselves.