… the Yankees Are Coming
As the U.S. Congress debates ways and means to pay for the ever burgeoning war debt a Confederate military officer uses that debt as a recruiting tool.
From the Richmond Daily Dispatch February 13, 1862:
To the Young men of Charlotte and adjacent counties.
–Your country, now in its hour of need, calls upon you to save her from the iron heel of the despot — the enemy of your native land, your enemy, the enemy that will, if he gets his iron hand on you, reduce you to a state worse than slavery; who will have at the end of another year’s war a debt of but little less than two thousand millions of dollars. The object is to make us pay it. He now has his armed hounds, like a belt of iron, encircling our land; he has an army the like of which the world has seldom seen, and only bides his time to rush upon us like an avalanche. Shall they overwhelm us? No. no; a thousand times no. Then, to arms, every man of the right age and of robust health, your coun[t]ry needs you all.
I come among you, after an absence of nine months, commissioned under the order of Gen. Johnston, to receive and muster into service recruits for the Charlotte [R]ifle in the Confederate service, under the late act of Congress. When not absent on this business, my officer will be at Charlotte C. H., where all information can be had.
Thos J. Spencer,
Capt. Com’g Co., K, 18th Va. Vols.,
Charlotte Rifles.
"armed hounds" heading south
