The aegis & intelligencer. [volume] (Bel Air, Md.) 1864-1923, 1865-12-22


or now than ever, not one star eclipsed
and its glorious beauty to be stained no
more With blood and tears of slave
BY way of rendering his auditors thank.
full for tue restoration of peace, he cen.
jures up the following images and cries
aloud for blood
The value of this blessing of peace
must be measured by the greatness Of the
previous battle, the interest which it in.
VOWED, and the pcrils which it brought.
"Thiuk how on all these lines of battle,
the rivers, the occan have been crinsoned
with the blool of Americans. Think of
the crowded gravcyards around every hos
pital think of the sixty four thousand
murdered, starved, poisoned in those
Southern prisons; think of those horrors
at which tie savage is amazed, by which
human nature was disgraccd, and by
which devils confessed themselves out
done. Sixty. four thousand murdered =
Think of them, starved into idiocy, star.
ing at you with their rayless eyes; look at
them, an army Of skeletons, and bark to
the cry of blood, the cry for justice rising
from their graves. What have we to an
swcr? We have hung one poor, miserable
subordinate, whose death produced no
mere moral influence than the crushing
Of fly would have done, while every
leader and instigator Of those horrors
walks as yet unharmod, and sixty thous.
and graves of the brave, true-hearted, are
crying out against US in the ear Of God. -
do net thank God for this"
The Pharisee next proceeds to speak Of
the South and its people after the follow
ing amiable fashion:
"Tho war has left the South alike ma
torial ruin md a moral wreck. The
ghastiy emptiness, the black desolation OF
their land, filed only with scorched ruins
and graves and dead mems bones, fifty
represent the general state Of the South
ern uind and heart.
THE South entered into the war as if
there were no God and no eternal princi-
pies Of right or wrong, as if greatness had
no connection with the right and the true
she did not know that no great and noble
thing ever was, or will be or can be done
in defence Of a tout and evident wrong
She went Into the battle to maintain mi
guilty, and she fought uuder the inspira.
ton of passion instead of priucip c.-
Those Southern leaders seemed to think
that they could kindle every evil passion,
that they could, as the Apostle says, set
the soul on fire Of hell, and yet the soul
not be consumed. They thought the,
could sea p a Yankee and drink out Of his
skull, aud make trinkets of his bones, and
not become savages themselves they
thought they could murder and torture
ard Starve dcFencoless prisoners, aud set
about generally to a devils work, and not
become devils themselves
"Fhey have, through an inevitable moral
law, reaped the fruit ot'ther doings. They
have paid the penalty of the most fearful
crimes of earth. They took religion and
public faith aud honor, and all the forces
of society, aud all the energies of the in-
divdual, and pressed them by force into
the service of Il foul iniquity, and, as God
could not be safely dcEed, nor the soul
lie has made he outraged with impuuity,
the Southern character has collapsed, and
there remains or y the ruins of humanity,
souls burned up With passion-the ashes
aud cinders Of the extinct volcano.
"For the present the South must rem ain
Incapable of an heroic Or great idea.--
The statesman may reconstruct the forums
OF the State, but to reconstruct ruined
soul is beyond his art, o The South has
committed suicide upon her moral nature,
and she must abide the result.
"The only choice which God has left the
South is repent or perish. The North on
the contrary has been made purer, strong.
err, nobler by the war. We too were in
imminent danger at the outset of being
ruined for the lack of moral principle
When our leaders were trying all possible
metbo IS Of couciliatiEg traitors when
they set the mere political Union above
justice, above hnman rights, and even the
Law of God, We stood on the verge Of de-
struction, because We were sapping the
moral power of the nation, and because,
with, ut an underlying moral principle and
sustaining moral force, no cause can be
great or successful. We were sinking
into the inaction and torpor which marks
the decay of moral power and spiritual
life, God in mercy startled the whole
nation with the thunder of the cannon at
Sumter. 1t seems to me that the mag
niiccnt outbur-t of holy wrath, that spir-
itual lightning flash Of patriotic fire which
followed the attack, was an Inspiration
from Heaven. The North seemed to
awake as under tho breath of the Al.
mighty.
"The first thrill of that new life went
through all true hearts, aud starting with
its first throb, the North awoke to a new
existence. She became capable of great
war aud great success. She put on
strength from God. As the contest went
on three great ideas gradually were re
vealed to tho Northern mind The idea
of delivering American Christianity from
all completely with our national sins; the