New seat of war – ‘down-trodden Maryland’
And time for a little retaliation
The Richmond editors are rallying the citizens to support the Confederate armies as they move to the offensive. I like the image of the Union army being like an eternal tide that advances into Virginia, gets its nose bloodied, recedes … but keeps on coming back.
From the Richmond Daily Dispatch September 11, 1862:
The forward Movement.
For a year and a half the South has stood upon the defensive, and contented itself with parrying the blows aimed against it by a gigantic adversary. Thanks to the protecting hand of Presidency and the unsurpassed heroism of a gallant and devoted people, the rushing tide of invasion has been rolled back, and victory after victory illumined our banners. But the successive retreats of our enemies have only been the ebb of a tide which has returned as regularly as it has retired, and bade fair to be of everlasting recurrence. In the meantime, a large portion of our territory has been exposed to the ravages of a brutal foe, and outrages committed upon peaceful and unoffending citizens which would have disagreed the barbarian of the dark ages. Impunity only added new stimulus to the ferocity of the foe, until the heart of civilization has been sickened by the cruel excesses which they have committed, and from which no age nor sex have escaped. But the war has now assumed a new phase. The victories which Providence has vouchsafed our arms have enabled us to assume the aggressive, and the theatre of war is now transferred from Virginia to the soil of down-trodden Maryland, where the first blood in the second war of independence was spilled, and where a kindred and gallant people have been made to suffer every evil and humiliation which could be inflicted by a foe bloated with triumph and demonize with malice and revenge. The hour of Maryland’s deliverance, long deferred, has come at last; the Confederate armies are upon her soil, and a noble people long crushed under the heel of despotism, will soon have the opportunity of rising upon their tyrants and meting out to them with compound interest the just punishment of their crimes.
Where first blood spilled on 4-19-1861(1862 image)
With the deliverance of Maryland will came that of Western Virginia, and our glorious old Commonwealth will soon, we trust, become “one and indivisible,” in action as in heart. The best of domestic traitors will be summarily routed out, and the gallant mountaineers will rally to the defence of their liberties, and swell the columns of the great army whose banners are now moving forward for the redemption of our whole land, and for righteous retribution upon a merciless and inhuman foe. We have not the shadow of a doubt that Western Virginia will ere long break the shackles which bind her hands, and that our sister, Kentucky, with the advance of the Army of the West, will shake off her ignominious bondage, and stand proudly erect, “redeemed, regenerated and disenthralled” When that suspicious hour arrives, let the tyrants tremble! They have hitherto known nothing of war but through the blatant editorials of their newspapers and the lying reports of their Generals. No roof of them has been fired, no women unsuited, no field desolated, no town and its helpless inhabitants bombarded. They will now be permitted to taste some of the peculiar sweets of the strife and carnage which they have invoked, and whilst we shall not imitate their own violation of the rules of humanity and civilized warfare, we trust that our Generals will prove themselves as sagacious, thorough, and vigorous, in a war of invasion, as they have already been in a war of defence. In that event, Lincoln’s new levies of six hundred thousand raw troops will be scattered by our trained veterans like chaff before the whirlwind, and the terms of peace dictated to a haughty and imbecile tyrant upon his own soil.
We have no apprehensions that the change from defence to the aggressive will increase the appetite of the Northern people for this war. We have already had evidence enough that their own security has stimulated them to increased ferocity and revenge. They have proved themselves insensible to the distastes of honor, justice, and compassion; and men who are to such influences, can only be operated upon by their fears. No argument can reach their understanding but bayonets and cannon at their own thresholds, and no defence of the South inspire them with respect, but that which throttles them under their own roof trees, and makes them realize in their own persons and property the horrors they have visited upon Southern soil.
Now is the time to strike the telling and decisive blows of the war. Our Generals are impressed with the fact; our soldiers burn with impatience to retaliate, upon Northern ground, our innumerable wrongs, and to bring this war to a close upon the spot where it commenced, and where alone it, can be ended.
