The Portland daily press., 1876-12-12
Turning the Tables.

Time brings surprising changes. The fire.
eaters are no longer of the South. They are
the men who walked up to the polls in North
ern states last November and cast their ballots
for Tilden and reform. They are the men
who are clamorous for gore, who will inau
gurate Tilden at all hazards, who are con-
vlnced that the sins of the republic must be
washed away in the blood of the radicals.
But their fierce and war-like temperaments
do not lead them to forget the value of train
ing and experience. They are not prepared
to take in so big washing themselves,
prefer to entrust it to those who have been in
the blood business. So they send down
showers of messages to the veteran laundry
men of the South, saying: Stand up for your
rights against radical encroachments. Strike
for your liberties and the conservative people
OF the North will support you. Join battle
and we will be with you, for We are just ach-
ing to wade up to our arm-pi's in blood.
1t is easy to imagine the contemptuous
scorn not unmixed with grim humor with
which the confederate brigadiers receive these
messages of the Northern braggarts. They
have heard like brave words before. The
men who battled for four long weary years,
who saw their homes burned down and their
lands laid waste, who faced death on hun
dred battlefelds, who fought all day and
marched all night, who shiyered and starved
for months With scarcely rag to cover their
nakedness and hardly crust to stay their
hunger, and who are now suffering
all the desolation of defeat. are asked
to renew the years of horror by blus-
terers whose only knowledge of fight
ing is got in bar-room troils, whose sole
idea of war is parade of militia upon mus
ter day. The SCARED and crippled Southern
veterans remember how sixteen years ago
word came down from the North that they
should be sustained, that if war broke out it
would be fought in every village of the land;
they remember how the whte-haired brigard
who now proposes to impeach the President
assured them that the thieves of New York
were to set up a commonwealth of their
own in alliance with the South; how dis
tinguished Indiana patriot sent word that
the Sons of Liberty were fastening to range
themselves under the Southern cross; how
an ex-President said that war would rage
among the hills Of New Hampshire; how a
Maine zcalot who only lacked courage to be-
come traitor promised armed assistance
from the lumbermen of the Penobseot. Re-
membering these things they remember too
how they were deserted in the hour OF their
trial; how their fierce allies of the North
took refuge in Canada, or skulking at home
voted large sums of money to hire other men
to subdue the Southland they regard these
allies with profound and unconcealed con-
tempt. The word they send back in response
to the latest message is fine in its scornful
humor: "You strike for liberty this time
and ,ce'u do the supporting" They have
been to war, and prefer the heavy standing
round to the fighting II is great deal
easier and doesn't hurt half as much. When
they see Marcellus Emery at the head of a
provisional government in Maine, and Eben
Pillsbury enforcing draft, and John Talbot
on recruiting service they will fall into line
and they don't propose to until then.