Pomeroy weekly telegraph. [volume] (Pomeroy, Meigs County, Ohio) 1860-1866, 1861-05-17
PRENTICE PAINTS THE HORRORS
OF WAR FOR THE BEN EFT OF
= NJ


OF WAR FOR THE BENEFIT OF
IkENTULkY.
The latest number Of the louisville
Journal has the following editorial
Let us draw a picture, and see how
our fellow-citizens of Kentucky like it.
Let US suppose that Kentucky has Sc
ceded in blaze of glory, even more re-
splendent than the glare of rockets, Ro
man candles, and other pyrotechnics,
which were displayed last fall for the
Union, the Constitution, and the en-
forccment of the Laws That act of Sc
cession will be the signal for war, and
the seat of that war will be our own soil.
Northern armies will invade us-the
Confederates will bring their legions to
attack the North--we shall have the
drum and fife, the bugle and the roar of
artillery-marchings, foraging parties,
bivouacs, camps, skirmishes, and "all
the pride, pomp, and circumstance Of
glorious war.
All our people will lay down the
shovel and the hoe to grasp the mus&et
and the rifle. War will be the great oc-
cupation of all our inhabitants, and who
will be left to SOW, to cultivate, and to
garner the harvests? Who will tend the
cornfelds, the tobacco patches, and the
hog droves, which must be well cared
for to prevent famine? Where will
the provision come from to feed the Con-
federate armies? The Cotton States
have not enough for their own use, and
we of Kentucky have had hard work to
keep our meal and corn bins filled after
the partial failure of our last crops.
But fighting is a very appetizing ex-
ercise; soldiers can't live on glory, with
out their rations of hog and hominy;
they must have beef, too; the cavalry
horses and the sturdy animals that draw
the cannon, must have provender, and
the commanders must have old Bourbon
and Catawba at their private messes.-
Where will the focks and herds, the
crops and vineyards, be found to supply
all this demand? The answer is plain
enough, for the foraging parties will
seize upon your priced cattle, your hay,
housed for your farm mules next winter,
and the perfect extract of corn or grape,
laid by for your own use, will be contis
Gated to the uses of war and military
necessity.
War confscates everything eatable and
drinkable to its capacious NAV, although
it may be all the time glutted with hu
man blood and gore. Thus we pass a
glorious summer campaign, and victory
may perch upon our banners; the rat
tlesnake may hiss it's delight and the
pelican cluck out its 10 triun.phe. Now
for the feast and the barbecue in honor
of our great achievements! But where
are the viands and the oxen? The solid
glebe has been unbroken by furrow,
though may have been plowed upon the
brows of fathers who mourn their gallant
sons, and of widows not to be cemforted
for the loss of their only supporters; the
hoof of the war horse, the tires Of the
gun carriages and caissons, and the
heavy tread of armed battalia have cast
the only seeds for the years tillage, and
famine, desolation, empty garners, the
sterile corn fields, have been the crop of
dragons teeth to pinch, and bite, and
starvei
'The soldier, tired of wars alarm"
receives his discharge, and, with a
bounding heart, although, perhaps, a
limping gait, he starts for his home-that
home which he has dreamed of before
the watch fires, and remembers, when
Peace was twinkling on the shepherd bell,
And singing with the reapers,
and what does he find but the marks of
rapine, lust, and all the odious con-
comitants Of war? The father bowed
down by distress, the mother, by Gods
blessing, dead, and the sister, the sweet
blooming rose left en- the parent stalk,
whose perfume was the incense Of in
nocence around the cottage, worse than
dead, because dishonored by brutal
soldiery.
Oh ye fathers and brothers of Ken
lucky, who know not the terrors and
havoc of war, who think only of its
glory and not of its evils, who, living
safely and guarded in your interior po-
sitions, have not felt the shock Of former
conflicts, nor had all the unclaimed
horrors and demons of hell brought to
your very doors, would that we could
paint in colors sufficiently glaring to i'm
press you, the misery, destruction,
havoc, tumult, carnage and despair
which attend the path Of gaunt and fero-
cious war.
And oh ye loved and fair ones, whom
we honor as mothers, cherish as wives,
and fondly nurture as daughters, would
to God we had pencil of fire to trace
before the eyes of your natural protect
ors the dangers to whicli they expose
you, when they enter upon the mad ca
reer of war. They subject you to days
of fear and nights of restless anxiety, to
privations, to widowhood, and orphan
age, to penury and lives of solitary
wretchedness; to homes broken up ruth
lessly, to the licentious gaze of brutal
lied men, to the insults of foppish Off
GERS, to the perils of the war cry, when
"booty and beauty rings from the voices
of demons through your now peaceful
streets; to the horrors Of the sack of cit
les and the pillage of private residences,
the fight with dishevelled hair and eyes
starting in terror from their sockets, to
escape the grasp Of drunken soldiers.
who claim you as the prize Of war; to
but we draw the curtain.
When the safety or the honor of Ken
lucky shall be at stake, Kentuckians
will not stop to count the cost; they
would be no less than the noble spirits
they are if they should. But when
both the safety and the honor of Ken
lucky, SO far from counseling war, de-
mand neutrality, surely her proud sons
will not, in the mere wanton riot of pas
sion, hurry her into the depths of peril
and Of woe that we have here so family
sketched