The herald and mail. [volume] (Columbia, Tenn.) 1873-188?, 1876-08-25
War as it Was and as it is.

The following is an extract from an adj
dress before the Yale law school:
| Some two thousand years before Christ
we read that certain king, one of the
kings of those times-the head of a tribe
\ or city-boasted, "Three score and ten
kings, having their thumbs and great toes
cut off, gather their meat under my ta-
| ble." When the men of Judah made his
royal mutilatOr a clptive according to
the received lex taliOnis of the age, they
cut off his thumbs and great toes, cast
him into a dungeon at Jerusalem and
left him to die of hunger. When Ne
buchadnezzar took Jerusalem he slew
the sons of king Zedekiah before his face,
| carried him to Babylon, put out both his
eyes ard left him to end his days in
prison. At the close of the long Jugur-
| thine war, Marius brought Jugurtha to
Rome, and, in accordance with theeStab-
lished usage of the Roman triumph.
chained to his chariot wheels this deposed
king, this gallant soldier, dragged him
in triumph through the streets, amid the
insults of the pOpulace, and when he
turned his chariot from the forum to as
cend the capitol, he unclaimed the royal
prisoner from his chariot wheel, cast him
nearly naked into a dungeon, where he
was not strangled until he had contended
six days against famine. When Carthage
was taken it was blotted from the map
of nations, its past destroyed, its ships
burned and its inhabitants sold as slaves
The campaign against COrinth ended in
the extinction of that luxurious, mag
nificent city and the enslavement of all |
its inhabitants. The curse which Joshua |
pronounced against the man who should !
presume to rebuild Jericho, "Cursed be |
the man who shall rise up and rebuild |
this city JerichOi He shall lay the |
foundation thereof in his first born, and |
in his youngest son he shall set up the
gates of it," was but the expression of
the common sentiment-the common
law of ancient times; at the height of
Greek and Roman civilization, after a
lost battle, every man, won1an and child
every human being, not slain-became
an exile or a slave. A campaign usually
ended in the destruction of city; awar
in an extinct nationality.
Let us skip over two thousand years
to our present civilization. The nine
teenuh century saw all Europe under
arms, from Siberia to Archangel, from
the Atlantic to the Vistula; ships bat
tered one another to pieces in every sea.
When these wars closed, by treaty of
peace, some boundaries were altered,
some dynasties were changed, but is not
necessary to say that all prisoners were
released and no property destroyed, for
such is the settled law of Christendom.
And when the allies took Paris by siege
each Cossack paid for a cup of coffee
handed him by the French waiter. and
the publicists and moralists of Europe
got angry III discussing the refined ques-
ton as to whether the allies had a right,
under the law of nations, to restore to
museums and galleries of Italy and Hol-
land the pictures and statues that NapO-
leon had taken from them as trophies of
war. When our late war closed, we held
ourselves responsible to the world, to
history, that our only prisoner, and he
the instigator and head of the rebellion, :
should be lodged and fed in accordance :
with the most refined rules. When at ,
asS proceedings against him ceased, a j
1orthern abolitionist became his bonds !
man, he took a trip to Europe as an :
American citizen, protected by an Amer
can passport. +