OUR WOUNDED.
As loftier rise the ocean's heaving crests,
Ere they sink, tempest-driven, on the strand;
So do these hearts and freedom-beating breasts,
Sublimed by suffering, fall upon our land.
Wounded! O sweet-lipped word! for on the page
Of this strange history, all these scars shall be
The hieroglyphics of a valiant age,
Deep writ in freedom's blood-red mystery.
What though your fate sharp agony reveals!
What though the mark of brother's blows you bear!
The breath of your oppression upward steals,
Like incense from crushed spices into air.
Freedom lies listening, nor as yet averts
The battle horrors of these months' slow length;
But as she listens, silently she girts
More close, more firm, the armor of her strength.
Then deem them not as lost, these bitter days,
Nor those which yet in anguish must be spent
Far from loved skies and home's peace-moving ways,
For these are not the losses you lament.
It is the glory that your country bore,
Which you would rescue from a living grave;
It is the unity that once she wore,
Which your true hearts are yearning still to save.
Despair not: it is written, though the eye,
Red with its watching, can no future scan:
The glow of triumph yet shall flush the sky,
And God redeem the ruin made by man.
A SOUTHERN REVIEW.
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.