Western Reserve chronicle. [volume] (Warren, Ohio) 1855-1921, 1872-09-04
THE BATTLE CRY OF REBELLION.

words, it rang constantly from rebe
battle line, and fort, and pirate ship
Anything to beat Grant"
1t sounded over the South from
Corinth when Beauregard was organ
izing to move on Shiloh, and brOugh
in regiments from New Orleans, mid
die aged gentlemen in broadclOth
and old men who left their homesanC
offices for a few days, only enlistiDl
for the battle. The Southwest wa
drained of material; and the limit!
of the cradle and the grave invaded
literally to meet the requirements o.
the rebel necessity. And the one
tions was: Anything and every
thing to beat Grant"
! Guerillas Swarmed everywhere in
rear of the Union forces, shooting
stragglers, robbing, killing sick and
wounded often, and violating every
rule Of warfare except that Of the
outlaG, cheered on constantly by
citizens, tolerated and aided by the
authorities, and protected by ALL
And this whole system, with all its
attendant ourages, was based upon the
one sentiment, Anything to beat
Grant"
The horrors of Fort Pillow and its
butcheries, when summed up in a
single phrase, read: Anything to
beat Grant" And so of Plymouth,
and so of the numbering of colOred
soldiers elsewhere under that stan
dard of rebellion, the stars and bars.
The starvation at AndersOnYille,
the marking out of the dead line"
there, and the shooting of those who
crawled across it for a cup of pure
water, or of those who stepped over it
deliberately to end their miseries-
| this whole unutteTable story of woe is
fully expressed in this revived motto
of the Democracy, Anything to beat
| Grant"
The same motto controlled at Sails
bury: With plenty of material for
shade and shelter, the Union prison.
ers were left to burrow in the ground
like animals and lest sun, and rain
and frost, and loathsome food should
not kill them fast enough, materials
were ground in with the musty corn
they were fed upon. Inside that
CHASTITY prison pen, honeycombed
with burrows, but one terrib e rule
was law: Anything to beat Grant. !"
Outside, along these heightened
trenches, where the cOTpses when re-
ceived were skeletons, the only burial
service uttered was Anything to
beat Grant" And this service, and
this alone was said over trench after
trench till eighteen, each nearly a
hundred yards in length, were filled
with uncofined soldiers, murdered
"to beat Grant"
As at Andersonville, and Salisbury,
and the other noted prisons, so the
cowardly and inhuman cry sounded
above the roar of the rapids about
Bell Isle. There, in full sight of the
residences of Lee and Davis, in full
view of the rebel Cabinet and the reb-
ell Congress, was the low, fiat tongue
OF the island, where thousands of the
"boys in bluen sank under starva-
ton and cold--starved "to beat
Grant"
Those unfortunates found by the
Union army on entering Wilmington,
who were bereft of reason through
exposure and want of food, who
could not tell their names, their regi-
ments, or their homes, and who died
with the bread too long delayed in
their hands, were victims to the one
handspring of rebel action there
''Anything to beat Grant"
In substance il was the one eYcu-
sing cry for all the minor sins which
fiourished under the crime Of treason.
Anything to destroy the Union; any
thing to weasen the Union forces !;
anything to exterminate Union sol
diers or Union men; anything to beat
Union Generals; anything to crush
the Republican party; anything to
beat Grant. Each and all signified
the same, and in their names every
outrage that disgraced the page of
rebel warfare was perpetrated. From
the firing on Sumter to the final sur
render, either in essence, or in exact
language, the one motto, cited to
cover all forms of atrociiy, was the
watchword of tO-day-"Anything to
beat Grant, Violate all rules of civ
ilized war, i'll treat prisoners, starve
them, disable them, if need be muir
der them. Anything to beat Grant.
Plan to burn Northern cities, plan to
poison them, plan to infect them with
contagious diseases. Anything to
beat.Grant.
When the war closed the cry did
not cease. Booth acted upon its spir-
it when, with his accomplices, he
the President, and attempt
ed the lives of the Cabinet officers
With him it was Anything to beat
the Republican party"
Andrew johnson followed him, and
tried by political tr9achery to restore
what the rebels in arms had lost
And with him the problem Of defeat
ing reconstruction was at last ques-
tion of beating Grant.
The Seymour campaign, fought out |
upon the principles of the BrOadhead |
letter, was but o call for q rebel rally |
to beat Grant.
Later the Ku-KluX banner has |
sported the motto. By its enforced |
authority Northern men have been |
driven out of the South, their prop |
erty destroyed, and their lives often |
taken. Union men have lived in one |
long reign of terror. Colored citizens |
have been prosecuted beyond the linn /
its which the old slave code tolerated, |
broad as those limits were. BY whip |
ping, by murders, by burnings, by |
terrt risms of all kinds, by every |
means which devilish ingenuity could /
devise, this organization has worked
Each masked marau-
der shouting to his fellow; Amy
hing to beat Grant"
1t is true that the motto, as used
the war, had but little per-
,onal reference to Grant, but always
20 the cause, or the principles which
be and the other Union leaders rep
And the old cry which is
ringing out again so tieroely now does
not apply to Gen. Grant as a person,
1ut to the selected standard bearer Of
he Republican party.
In the contest, for many, Gen. Grant
Is a person receives only secondary
but for all Republicans
zen. Grant as the candidate of their
1srty stands as the representative OF
III that was gained by the war, and
he good that has come to the country
n the wears which have succeeded ii.
As in the years of the war the loyal
North made answer to the rebel shout,
ANYTHING to beat Grant," by push
NO on its columns in a never ceasing
march. sparing no effort till victory
peace so, when the same
hout rings over the land again, there I
will surely be loyal rally to preserve
THAT those brave columns wrested
rom the old foe on Its feet again.
,iRcinnati Gazette, E.