South Arming the Slaves
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NOVEMBER 12, 1864.] HARPER'S WEEKLY. 723 (Previous Page) of free speech ? Are the papers that speak of Mr. LINCOLN as the Aurora used to speak of General WASHINGTON really deprived of their " liberty ?" Yet all these men and these papers labor for the election of General McCLELLAN. Is that the company a good Union-loving citizen wishes to keep ? Is that the candidate the true friends of free speech wish to vote for ? Straws show how the tide is running. PODSNAPPERY.IF any nation is anxious to see the overthrow of the American Government it is the English. The British aristocracy has said and done all it could to aid the rebellion ; and its organs cheer lustily for General McCLELLAN and Mr. PENDLETON. Some weeks ago the London Post, the organ of Lord PALMERSTON, the British Prime Minister, under the heading, "American Union passing away," said : "The institutions of the American Republic were, in the fullest signification of the term, liberal, and in no country in the world has more keen regret been felt than in free England that those institutions should be, to all appearances, on the point of extinction." The spirit which thus complacently chuckles over what it calls tile prospect of our national ruin, instinctively works and prays for the defeat of ABRAHAM LINCOLN and ANDREW JOHNSON, whose careers from the poverty in which they were born to the distinction they have reached are noble illustrations of the operation of American institutions. COLONEL LOWELL.THE late Colonel LOWELL, whose portrait Is upon page 733, and of whom we spoke last week, was buried on Friday, October 28, at Mount Auburn, in Cambridge, near Boston. His commission as a Brigadier-General had been signed, and was on the way to him when he fell. A letter from one competent to speak says : " I do not think there was any officer in all the army so much beloved as LOWELL." " We all shed tears," said CUSTER, "when we knew that we had lost him. It is the greatest loss the cavalry corps has suffered." " I do not think there was a quality," said SHERIDAN," which I would have added to LOWELL." "ELECTION DAY."Mr. NAST and Mr. BELLEW have done admirable pictorial service in this paper for the Union cause. The grave and poetic designs of Mr. NAST, and the clear, comic pungency of Mr. BELLEW'S caricatures, have brought home the issues of this canvass to many a mind more forcibly than any argument or speech. This week Mr. NAST shows us the significance of the scene at the ballot-box. Surrounded by illustrations of the various persons and classes who decide at the polls the fate of the country and of free popular institutions, the figure of Peace, with drooping head and clipped wings, as if prostituted to a hateful purpose, with her hands manacled behind her, stands before the sacred urn, while the twin Satans of secession and sympathy with it push their ballots into her hand. But opposite to her—calm; erect, and majestic, the consciousness of victory in her heart and its Fire bearing in her eye—the ripe and noble figure of the Country, American Union and Liberty, drops her ballot into the box. You can read upon it the name of ABRAHAM LINCOLN, whom the heart of that Country desires to see the next President of the United States. AN UNANSWERABLE QUESTION.A CORRESPONDENT in the interior of New York asks : "Can you explain the present anomalous position of the so called Democratic party? If a large portion of the Democratic party are, as they claim, truly loyal, why do they so pereistently oppose every attempt of the constituted authorities to suppress the rebellion ? They cry out and call aloud for fair play, and yet constantly pervert and misconstrue willfully every act of the Government. They have long prayers for our 'bleeding country,' and yet offer nothing but hyssop and vinegar to soothe it in its hour of agony. What judgment will be meted out by coming generations to these would be creed makers ? "'As they sew so shall they reap.'" A SOLDIER'S VOTE.A SOLDIER forwards us the Union National and State ticket, and writes ; "I go this whole thing without any repugnance of conscience. Woe unto traitors ! We will whip them." A MILITARY BLISTER FOR COPPERHEADS.IN the United States Military Hospital at Jeffersonville, Indiana, a thorough canvass of the inmates in September showed the following result. Lincoln and Johnson .... 50 McClellan and Pendleton 2 Doubtful 2 The veterans add that the Copperhead vote is givers in aid of "the despicable aristocracy" which is trying to overthrow the Government, and they say of the party which can not heartily cheer for the victories of SHERIDAN, SHERMAN, GRANT, and FARRAGUT : "They should be remembered as long as they live for their treachery, and be forever denied by their outraged countrymen the privilege of holding any office of honor, profit, or trust; and so far as our knowledge of them and our votes and influence will effect it, they shall be." OUR " PATTERNS."THE following letter comes from two gentlemen who, beyond any doubt whatever. intend to vote for General McCLELLAN and Mr. PENDLETON ; who confide reverently in Mr. VALLANDIGHAM ; who denounce the "Abolition war," and "ABE LINCOLN'S despotism ;" who wish well to the rebellion, and desire, as faithful supporters of the Chicago platform and candidates, to confess that the American people are conquered, and to implore the gracious pardon of JEFFERSON DAVIS. For all these reasons the two gentlemen do not like this paper. We should be heartily ashamed of ourselves if they did: "PLAINFIELD, O., Oct. 21, 1864. " Ed. of Harper's Weekly: "DER SIR,—You will much oblige your Patterns at this office if you will pleas keep your dam Blagard Sheet at home, or Send it to them that can Stumic it. We can not gow it any longer." SPEKE. DIED THURSDAY, 16TH SEPTEMBER, 1864. SOUTHWARD to unearth a secret Kept six thousand years Onward, onward, one of England's Boldest pioneers- One with high determination Held in perfect drill ; Working out a fixed purpose Grappled by the will. Up the highway of a river, Coming silently, With a broad, mysterious volume To the Syrian Sea. Girt with courage of the Saxon Strideth on a man, Breaking down great wails of hindrance, As a Briton can. Type of an immortal precept That bath ever stood As a beacon to the nations-- English hardihood. Tracking down the Ethiop stream line, Resolute to win Access to the hidden chamber Of its origin. Throwing back great waves of peril Rising in the way Out upon the sea of venture Valiantly he lay. Captured by the fierce SOMALI, Wounded, scorched, and bound, By a lance his very muscles Nailed to the ground. Still the storied, bull-dog valor Of the island race Taught him how to dash his fetters In his captor's face. Up be springs to tear the cordage From his swollen hands; Girds him for escape—his bold blood Dripping on the sands. Manly, sun-burnt features settled To an infant calm Lo ! he sleeps beneath the heavy Shadow of the palm. Head upon his arm—the north land Visited in dream While the shafts of tropic fire Tremble on the stream. Home ! from many a close, locked wrestle Where grim death did press Hard upon him as he journeyed Through the wilderness. Home ! to meet the grip of welcome From an English hand; Home ! to find his deeds of daring Famous in the land. Home ! his triumph by a people Countersigned and sealed; Home ! to find the spoiler waiting On an English field.
From the gable of a farm-house
Through a copse the sunlight quivers On the browning oak. Past the underwood and flowers Murmureth the burn ; Past a shattered body lying On the tangled fern. HUMORS OF THE DAYTHE following is related as " the President's last story" In dismissing a party of hungry place-seekers who had often wearied him, and finally exhausted his patience, Mr. Lincoln said they reminded him of the story of the school master who told one of his pupils to read the third chapter of Daniel. The boy began, but when he came to the names of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego, he stumbled. The master required him to proceed. He tried again and failed. Pedagogue then tried a flogging, but still no go. Relenting, the master told the boy he might read the preceding chapter, and let the present one go. The boy brightened up and took hold with a will.' He got on famously until he reached the last verse, when, pausing, a look of consternation overcame his countenance and he dropped the book, exclaiming in a doleful voice, " Why Isere are them three rascally fellows again !" The trio sloped, and some of their friends say it was a fair hit. "This is the last rose of summer!" exclaimed a wag, as he rose from his bed on the 31st of August. Let a man do his best, and the world may do its worst. JACKSON BOOTS AND SEYMOUR SLIPPERS. ONE of our patriotic clergy of this city lately said that he had looked with great hope to the Chicago Convention, thinking that they might start a patriotic movement that would unite the heart of the nation and break down the old party walls. But he was bitterly disappointed. All that was necessary was to build a hickory platform, raise the old flag over it, and hang a pair of Andrew Jackson's old boots on the flag-staff. Instead of hickory, we had at Chicago only saw dust; instead of the old flag, there was a banner that was so dim and uncertain as to puzzle the looker on to tell whether it was the Stars and Stripes or the Stars and Bars ; instead of Andrew Jackson's old boots, there were Horatio Seymour's bran new slippers–slippery enough they were too. THE ONION AND THE UNION.
Dr. Osgood gave the Agricultural
Address before the Fairfield County farmers at Norwalk, Connecticut, September
30, and spoke of the duty that the great farming
Lord Brougham told the following anecdote at the late meeting of the Social Science Congress ; Horne Tooke was sitting in a room by himself one day when in rushed a lunatic, flourishing a large bladed knife in his hand. The lunatic said, "You are Mr. Horne Tooke, are you not?" "Yes," was the reply. "Then," said the lunatic, " I will soon put an end to you." Horne Tooke answered, " If you do you will suffer for it." "Oh," said the madman, "I came out of Dr. Shipton's asylum t'other day, and they can't punish me." Horne Tooke rejoined, with great fact, "Then I suppose you don't know that a law was passed only t'other day saying that all lunatics should be hanged?" "No, I didn't know that," replied the madman, instantly throwing down the knife in a tremor and slinking out of the room. A bull is good eating in any land. Here is a fine one produced by the Independence in a burst of fine writing. "A hundred thousand hearts were beating as they witnessed the ascent of Nadar ; a hundred thousand eyes were watching the movements of the balloon"—thus showing that each possessor of a heart was either shutting one eye or had but one eye--a singular Belgian race. Lord Norbury was celebrated equally for his wit and his severity as a criminal judge. At one time, as a special commissioner appointed to try the culprits in one of the Irish rebellions, he had in course of a sitting convicted a great many. "You are going on swimmingly here, my lord," said a counsel for the prisoners. "Yes,," answered his lordship, significantly, "seven knots an hour." THE TOPER'S AUTUMN SOLILOQUY.. Leaves have their time to fall, And so likewise have I: The reason, too, is the same. Both comes of getting dry, But here's the difference 'twixt you and me, I fall more harder and more frequently. Why is a lucky billiard-player like an anchor?—Because he holds his ground entirely by flukes. "Sambo, am you posted in natural sciences?" "Ob course I is ; sartingly." " Then you can tell me the cause of the great blight in potatoes for the last ten years?" "Oh! dat's easy enough. It's all owing to de rot-tater-y motion of the earth." A Parisian advertises photographs giving to the physiognomy the effects of the full moon shining on the face. He says the softness that the moon produces is remarkable. There is no doubt of it. A poor Frenchman being aroused from sleep by his wife, with the cry, "Get up, Baptiste, there's a robber in the house," calmly answered, "Don't let us molest him. Let him ransack the house, and if he should find any thing of value we'll take it away from him." A company of French players were giving one of Racine's plays, in which it became necessary to have is number of German Soldiers on the stage to represent the Greek army. Not one of these men understood the French language, with the exception of a non-commissioned officer, who knew it a little, and was therefore appointed to interpret the prompter's orders. At the most solemn part of the, tragedy the prompter gave the order to go off. " Sortez," said he, but the German sergeant, knowing nothing of the play, mistook the word for"Sautez," whereupon all the soldiers began dancing forthwith, to the astonishment as well as mirth of the audience, and, it is to be presumed, to the disgust of the actors, who easy their efforts to move their auditors to tears rendered abortive by the blunder. When is a candle likely to be angry?—When it's put out, to be sure. An old Irishman who had witnessed the effect of whisky for many years past, said a barrel labeled whisky contained a thousand songs and fifty fights. " George, do you know that Mr. Jones has found a beautiful baby on his door-step, and is going to adopt him?" "Yes, papa; he will be Mr. Jones's step-son, won't he?" A young lady has discovered the reason why married men, from the age of thirty years and upward, are more or less bald; they scratch the hair off in dismay at their wives long milliners' bills! If is a curious fact in the grammar of politics that, when statesmen get into place, they often become oblivious of their antecedents, but are seldom forgetful of their relatives. Tom Hood says nothing spoils a holiday like a Sunday coat or a new pair of boots. To have time set easy, your garments must set the example. Henry Erskine happening to be retained for a client of the name of Tickle, began his speech in opening the case, thus: "Tickle, my client, the defendant, my lord"—and upon proceeding so far was interrupted by laughter in court, which was increased when the Judge (Lord Kaimes) exclaimed: "Tickle him yourself, Harry you are as able to do so as I am. " A gentleman afflicted with rheumatism consulted a physician, who immediately wrote him a prescription. As the patient was going away the doctor called him back. "By-the-way, Sir, should my prescription happen to afford you any relief, please to let me know, as I am myself suffering from a similar affection, and have tried in vain to cure it." "What's fashionable, I'll maintain Is always right," cries sprightly Jane; "Ah, would to Heaven !" cries graver Sue, " What's right were fashionable too." A traveler coming up to an inn door, said: "Pray, friend, are you the master of this house?''--" Yes, Sir,'' answered Boniface, "my wife has been dead these three weeks." During the riots of 1780 most persons in London, in order to save their houses from being burned or pulled down, wrote on their doors, "No Popery!" Old Grimaldi, the father of the celebrated "Joey," to avoid all mistakes, wrote on his, "No Religion!" REASON FOR THICK ANKLES. "Harry, I can not think," says Dick, "What makes my ankles grow so thick." "You do not recollect," says Harry, "How great a calf they have to carry." Mr. Reynolds, the dramatist, once met a free-an I-easy actor, who told him that he had passed three festive days at the seat of the Marquis and Marchioness of — , with-out any invitation. He had gone there on the assumption that as may lord and lady were not on speaking terms, each would suppose the other had asked him, and so it turned out. When ladies wore their dresses very low and very short, a wit observed that "they began too late and ended too soon." A gentleman gave a friend some first rate wine, which he tasted and drank, making no remark upon it. The owner, disgusted at his guest's want of appreciation, next offered some strong but inferior wine, which the guest had no sooner tasted than he exclaimed that it was excellent wine. "But you said nothing of the first," remarked his host. "Oh!" replied the other, "the first required nothing being said of it. It spoke for itself. I thought the second wanted a trumpeter." Mrs. Smith, hearing strange sounds, inquired of her new servant if she snored in her sleep. " I don't know, marm," replied Becky, quite innocently; " I never lay awake long enough to diskiver." DOMESTIC INTELLIGENCE.THE VIRGINIA CAMPAIGN.ON Thursday, October 28, General Grant moved his entire army for the purpose of finding on either flank some vulnerable point in the enemy's lines. The movement in, neither direction had a fortunate issue. On the left the Second, Fifth, and Ninth corps advanced in three separate columns. The Second Corps by a circuitous march moved along the Vaughan Road, and thence northwestwardly to Hatcher's Run, three miles beyond our extreme left. Here they met the enemy, driving in his pickets, forty of whom, including a major, were captured. From this point the corps moved westwardly, and struck the Boydton road, along which the enemy has been transporting supplies since the seizure of the Weldon Railroad. The Fifth Corps advanced by a more direct route, also striking the Boydton road on the right of the Second. The third column consisted of the Ninth Corps, which moved up to the right of the Fifth. The position taken was one which, if held, would prove of great advantage to us, as it secured possession of a road of considerable importance to the enemy, and seriously threatened the South side Railroad. The rebels, watching their opportunity, and discovering a gap in the Federal line between the Second and Fifth corps, attacked with great vigor at this point. This attack was made at 4 o'clock P.M. by Mahone's Division of Hill's Corp. Forming under cover of the woods, this division advanced and at first gained an advantage, and inflicting on the Second Corps a considerable loss. But the attack was finally repulsed, though Grant was compelled to withdraw. As the rebels were driven back nearly a whole brigade of them was captured by the Second Corps. The rebel cavalry followed the Federals as they withdrew, but inflicted no injury. Our loss was about 1500. We took 828 prisoners and four battle-flags. The same day Butler's army north of the James co-operated with the advance on the left by as movement on the extreme right. In the morning the Eighteenth Corps, with Kautz's division of cavalry, pushed across from the Darbytown to the Charles City Road, having orders to avoid an engagement, but to ascertain the exact situation of the enemy's left flank, and to turn it if possible. The Tenth Corps, in the mean time, took a position on the Darbytown Road, facing toward Richmond, Foster's division in the centre, and Ames's on the right. The rebels were a little distance in front, under cover of the woods. Skirmishing was kept up nearly all day. By 4 P.M. Weitzel, with the Eighteenth Corps, had advanced beyond the Charles City Road, and reached the Williamsburg Road, not far from the "Seven Pines" battle-field. The enemy's line at this point appeared to be weakly defended, and two brigades were ordered to attempt it by assault. As they moved up to the breast works they became exposed to a terrible cross-fire. Some of the column made good their retreat, but the greater part of the two brigades were captured. Four miles farther to the right Holman's colored division captured, at the same time, a redoubt mounting two guns. Orders were then given for the entire command to return to their intrenchments. THE WESTERN CAMPAIGN.October 17 General Beauregard assumed command of the military division of the West. In an address issued on that occasion he says: "'The army of Sherman still defiantly holds Atlanta. He can and must be driven from it. It is only for the good people of Georgia and the surrounding States to speak the word, and the work is done. We have abundant provisions. There are men enough in the country liable to and able for the service to accomplish this result. "To all such I earnestly appeal to report promptly to their respective commands, and let those who can not to see to it that none remain who are able to strike a blow in this critical and decisive hour. To those soldier's, if any, who are absent from their commands without leave, I appeal in the name of their brave comrades, with whom they have in the past so often shared the privations of the camp and the dangers of the battle field, to return at once to their duty. "To all such as shall repot to their respective commands in response to this appeal within the next thirty days an amnesty is hereby granted. My appeal is to every one, of all classes and conditions, to come forward freely, cheerfully, and with good heart to the work that lies before us." General Hood, after an unsuccessful attack on Decatur. Alabama, is reported to be crossing the Tennessee. General Meridith, commanding at Paducah, has received intelligence from General Sherman that Forrest was meditating an attack on that place. Paducah is being put in a thorough state of defense. General Gillem a few days since gained a victory over, a portion of Breckinridge's forces in East Tennessee. He captured M'Clung's battery and 500 prisoners. General Price still continues his retreat southward. Pleasanton, who has been engaged in pursuit, was injured a few days since by a fall from his horse. THE REBELS ARMING THEIR SLAVES.The editor of the Southern Confederacy, a Georgian paper, in writing home to his paper, from Richmond, says: " The pressure brought upon the authorities here, favoring the arming of the blacks, has been to strong to resist. Hence it is with gratitude that I am able to state officially that arrangements are now being made to arm, for the spring campaign, three hundred thousand slaves, whose masters are to be compensated by the Confederate Government. The slaves thus armed are to have their freedom and fifty acres of land each, which insures them permanent homes in the South." THE NEW STATE OF NEVADA.The Territory of Nevada, which has just been admitted to the Union as a State, by proclamation of President Lincoln, was organized in March, 1861. For this purpose about ten thousand square miles were appropriated from the northern extremity of California, and about seventy thousand from Western Utah. At the time of its organization the Territory possessed a population of very nearly 7000 white settlers. The development of her mineral resources was rapid and almost without parallel, and attracted a constant stream of immigration to the Territor;y. As the population has not been subject to the fluctuations from which other Territories have suffered, the growth of Nevada has been rapid and steady. At the general convention election of 1863 nearly 11,000 votes were cast; during the present year great accessions to the population have been made. |
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