The Burlington weekly hawk-eye. [volume] (Burlington [Iowa]) 1860-1876, 1864-02-13

THR CONFEDERATE CONSCRIPTIoN.-
This measure has been enacted In secret
session, and its nature is now revealed. 1t
declares every man between the ages Of Is
and IS in the military service for the war.
1t requires some reelection to comprehend
the tyranny of this edict. Nothing that
can compare with it was ever enacted by
the most despotic Governments in the
world. 1t means that every man from
youth OF Is up to the age Of SIS is declared
by an edict to belong to the army, subject
at once to the articles of war, to military
discipline and military penalties; and that
If he does not report himself for duty at q
military station within a given time, he
will be subject 70 the penalty Of death as
deserter. The entire people are declared
soldiers, and under martial law. For car
rying OIL such mechanical trades as are in
dispensable to the supply of the army, the
mechanics will be detailed to do the work
under military discipline and military paw.
Thus the question OF wages is simpliiied.-
So with such other kinds of labor as are in
dispensable. Mechanics and laboring men
will be detailed from the army TO work on
army supplies. Railroad men, telegraph
ers and miners Will be detailed under mil
itary rule and Oh the pay Of Sl3 month in
Confederate paper, which is current at
about five cents on the dollar Govern
ment, State and county officers will be de-
tailed from the army. Planters will be
detailed to oversee the negroes All the
production and labor OF the country will be
under military control; and this system Of
detailing will furnish boundless latitude
or official favorits.sm by which the sisto-
cratic class, most guilty Of the rebellion.
will continue to escape service and danger
in the field, while the entire middling and
laboring white class will be swept In by
this atrOcious CONSUMPTION. and those who
are required to labor will be ordered to do
IT. BY military officer, under military dis
cipline, and with wages reduced to the
snain that the Confederate SOLDIER has to
take.
We might wonder that the Democratic
party In the North, which pretends SO
much anxiety lest the right of the South
ern people shall be infringes, and so much
jealousy lest even a volunteer army, and
Tue military effort necessary to prevent the
overthrow of Constitutional Government,
snail Lead to military despotism, has no
remark to make, and no word of disappro-
baton to offer, against this merciless ty.
ranny which has crushed the entire people
laDor and prosperity of the Southern peO-
pie, laid its despotic hand on the liberty,
property and life of every man; whose
despotism UNNECESSARILY exceeds that.of
all the traditional despots of the world, and
caves besides nothing despotic that can be
Imagined; did We not know that all this
Democratic sympathy is for the Confeder-
ate Democratic leaders, and not particle
of it for the mass of the Southern people;
that the same party ties bind these North
ern Democratic partisans to the Southern
leaders now, as when they ruled Congress,
the Administration and the Democrats of
the North with the same despotic control,
and that this military despotism is in eye-
ry respect Democratic. Nor could sympa-
thy for the people oppressed by this des-
potism be reasonably expected from North
ern Democratic subalterns who themselves
so long submitted to the same insolent
despotism in the Government and in the
party; who lost every spark OF manhood
IN il, and who are iaboring now 10 restore
the same despotic dominion, and to perpe-
tuate their own slayish subsection to it,
On. Go.ette.