American citizen. [volume] (Butler, Butler County, Pa.) 1863-1872, 1865-03-01
"Talxing to the Bush or. UO to
the COnUuerers.S

sort which the rebel leaders are couteH-
plating, and amounts to confession OF
the end that draws nigh:
Woto the conquered for submission
will not bring about peace, nor even in
aueurate truce A few may submit and
bow their necks to the yoke which the
Yankees will impose. The latter already
assume that State is subjugated when
tenth of its people agree to reconstruc-
tion. Whenever and wherever this may
happen confscation will begin Loyal
landholders will be driven from their
farms, and Yankee intruders will occupy
them. No matter whose farm is coveted,
it will be easy to suborn Yankee witness
es, and still easier to buy up disloyal
Southrons, for they are baser and more
venal than Yankees, to prove that the
owner of the desired property is untrue
to the North. Soon, very soon, all the
lands of the submitting States would pass
into the hands Of northern landlords.
Spies and informers, in swarms, would in
fest the community, evesdropping search
ing houses, and dogging the heels of ev-
or; Southron. In the various villages and
crossroads Yankee troops, black and
white. would be stationed to watch, insult,
and rob the elected confederates The
craven-spirited submissionists would then
become hirelings and farm hands for the
Yankee landlords, at the rates of wages
depressed alike by northern cruelty and
cupidity, and negro competition. These
landlords would exultingly and truly pro-
claim that "free labor was cheaper than
slave labor" And so it would be, for
they would not pay any wages to white
laborers, taking their families all round l.
one-half the usual allowance to slaves
All the outcry against slavery proceeds
from the fact that "free labor is cheaper
than slave labor" that is free society the
landholders, house-owners, and other cap
italists, by starving the poor, soon force
them to work for less allowance than a
humane master freely comedies to his
slave Hunger, cold and nakedness, are
as efficient physical coercives as hickor-
les. Capital, like a master, commands
labor, but is not at the responsibility or
cost of owning it. 1t only allows the la
borer portion of his own earnings, and
smaller portion than masters allow their
slaves, and hence, and hence only, free
labor is cheaper than slave labor. Capt.
tai of all kinds is a mere instrument en-
ployed by its owners to compel the poor
to work, and to pay each other; for capi-
tai does not work, is not producer, and
all useful products, or values, are the re-
suits of labor The rich throughout free
society are masters without the humane
feelings or interests Of masters. All at
tempts to remedy the seeming injustice
of domestic slavery have but aggravated
the evil intended to be cured for through
out the world it is admitted, nay it is the
boast, " that free labor is cheaper than
slave labor" which is exactly tantamount
to saying "that the allowance of the slave
is greater than the wages paid, or rather
allowed, the free laborer." But let us
return from this disgression. Let not
the few dastardly submissionists amongst
us try to deceive themselves, or to deceive
others, by pretending that Yankee rule,
after all, would not be so intolerable; but
would be only the exchanging one form
of political government for another. The
whole lands of the South would not re-
pay the North for the cost of conquest
and those lands, if success full, they are
determined to have. Then the Southron
submissionsts would be reduced to state
ofslavery more degrading, cruel and ex.
acting than ever before was imposed on
human being. " Va VictiS F'-wo to the
conquered who would have so terrible a
fate to endure but wo also to the con.
querors, for their calamity would begin
The condition to which they would
reduce our people is one which nine
tenths of them would never endure
They would take to the bush, like the
Israelitcs under Moses of Joshua, and a
part of them under David like our Sem
mole Indians; like the Scotch and Welsh
1--WE speak metaphorically, for Scotland
does not boast of trees or bushes who
have never been conquered; like the
Swiss, the Spaniards, the Circassians, the
Dutch the La Vendeans like all people
inhabiting mountainous, or desert, or
marshy countries. This war would only
fairly have begun when our houses, oul
enclosures, our villages and cities are
burned our crops destroyed and our fields
laid waste Then wo to the conquerers
for then would begin the banditti war.
fare, the lying in wait, the ambuscade aud
surprise, murder in detail, assassination
in every form. Already much of our
country is rapidly growing up in dense
forest, roads have become impossible fol
wheel carriages; cattle and hogs in large
droves are running wild; our woods and
our fields TEEN with game, and our creeks
and rivers with fish and foul. The vol.
untary fruits of our soil, added to the re.
sources just enumerated would enable us
to carry on a guerrilla warfare almost in.
terminably; for these resources increase
daily, Just as the devastations of the enc
my extend If our affairs should come
to the worst, and if we should not be able
to maintain large regular armies in the
field, we would, by guerriia warfare, make
the South too hot to hold Yankee intru-
ding landlords. They would be watched,
ambushed, and shot down by night and
by day, hike beasts of prey Few, who
would end themselves, their wives, and