FEDERAL WARFARE.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 806, 19 July 1864, Page 6

FEDERAL WARFARE.

(From the Saturday Eeyieto )

The proverbial fact that degeneracy is always gradual is consoling to humanity as an abstract proposition, but it is certainly irritating to the bystanders in any particular case. It is during that easy but slow descent that the world lavishes its censure most liberally upon the traveller who is making the journey. Few people are at the trouble of abusing offepders who have formally taken leave of their characters. It is commonplace and dull to fling epithets at the head of politicians who are avowedly professional, or of women who are quite abandoned. It is only the politician who, having once been high-minded, becomes dirtier and dirtier in his tricks, or the woman who was once religious and is now visibly "friskifying," that provokes spectators into sayingbitter things. The same rule applies to the system of warfare which the Federals are pursuing. A good deal of very genuine horror is excited in this country by the accounts we receive of it, and very strong epithets are freely applied to it. Thereean be no question that it thoroughly deserves them all. All war is systematised destruction, and that is bad enough, But in civilised countries war is made as it were mechanically, and without passion. The Government which makes war determines upon the measures that will bring its enemy to terms, and then employs its machines, its army and navy, to execute those measures. But both the combatants themselves and the Government which directs them are careful to avoid any destruction which does not evidently promote the attainment of their chief object, or which tends to assume the form of vulgar robbery or murder. Having on the whole, attained to this grade of humanity ourselves, we have a right to stigmatise as savage and barbarous any warfare conducted upon different principles. But it is only a small portion of the human race that has adopted this more refined plan, and if the Federals choose to depart from it they have the majority of the species on their side. All the black races in Africa, all the Chinese and Japanese, all the natives of India, as we learned to our cost during the mutiny, and probably the Russians and Turks, when they get a chance of doing so unobserved—all practise warfare upon the uncivilized plan. They give full rein

to their evil passions, and look upon war as mere murder and malicious mischief on a large scale. The more murder and the more mischief, therefore, that can be committed, the mare successful the war has been. The result for which the combatants fight is not to arrive at a permanent and peaceful settlement, but merely to indulge their minds with the grateful reflection that they have inflicted a large amount of |exquisite pain and misery upon their antagonists. The pangs of those whom they have killed and wounded, the privations of those whom they have made destitute, the mental agony of those whom they have dishonoured, these are the trophies their valour carries off and the prizes for which they risk their lives. The exploits which the Federals are performing on this system of warfare woulJ not have attracted much notice if they had begun by being the sort of people from whom such things were to be expected. 'But they began upon the European, not upon the Red Indian principle, and they still use the language of civilised belligerents. They only descended gradually to their present ferocity, though the gradations have undoubtedly followed each other quickly. At first, outrages were disavowed or explained away. Colonel Turchin's proceedings at Athens were rebuked at the time, and after the lapse of a few months the tale was contradicted altogether and treated as a myth. General Butler's proclamation was explained away, and a sense put upon it whicn it could not possibly bear. The horrible murder per- | petrated by General M'Neil was apologised j .for, and the Washington Government was excused for neglecting to take notice of it j on the plea that General M'Neil was serving his own State, and not the general Government. The next step was to inflict unnecessary devastation, but to 'do so under the plea of military necessity—as where a district as large as Scotland was laid under water by cutting the banks of the Mississipi. Now we have advanced a further still. The wanton outrages which are committed are no longer denied, or explained away, or excused, as inevitable—they are claimed as a triumph, and reported as a sufficient result of a costly expedition. Sherman and Kilpatrick count up, not merely the roads or railways or enemy's stores they have destroyed—but the corn they have burnt, the fields they have laid waste, the farmhouses and mills and villages they have reduced to ashes ; and they do this out a word of rebuke from their Government or from the party that supports their Government. It is argued that the destruction of food and of the means of raising it has the effect of weakening the Confederacy by diminishing its resources. The same argument would justify any kind of barbarity practised under the pretence of war. The slaughter of unarmed peasants tends ta lessen the resources of the enemy's conscription. The ill-treatment or the plaughter of women tends to prevent the increase of the enemy's population—in other words, the resources of his conscription seventeen or eighteen years hence. Even the fearful crimes for which Ciprano and Giona La Gala have recently been condemned to death in Southern Italy might be defended with perfect . consistency by persons warring on the principle of the Yankees. If it is to be once assumed that the object of inconveniencing an enemy will justify wanton devastation of private property and the slaughter of noncombatants, it is difficult to deny the right of terrifying a population from aiding an enemy by the infliction of appalling punishments. The proclamations that are reported to have been found upon Colonel Dahlgren* would seem to show that the Yankees have themselves discovered the logical accuracy of this deduction. The order to burn Richmond was bad enough—worthy of the Government that did its best to set fire to the commercial part of the town of Charleston, because the fortified part refused to capitulate. But the order to kill Jefferson Davi3 is something more than detestable. It strikes the reader as much with amazement as it does with horror. If we are to believe in the authenticity of a story which has not, we regret to say, yet received any satisfactory disproof, it is a marking point in the history of the degradation of public opinion in the Northern States showing how far they have drifted from the landmarks of civilised morality. It would be hard |to find a parallel to it iv the | history of Europe. The most brutal I and bloody generals that have cursed the

world have never attempted to carry on war by murdering the Sovereign of their enemies. Tilly, Suwarrow, Davoiist, were unscrupulous enough, and cared little how far they stretched the laws of war, or trampled upon the feelings of humanity. But no such crime as this was ever laid to their charge, We must go back to the massacre of St. Bartholomew, or the murder of William the Silent, in order to find a parallel in the history of Europe. And even in these cases the black task was entrusted to conspiritors or secret assassins. The very darkness in which the principal actors were shrouded, was a confession of the turpitude of their act—a homage to the moral sense of mankind. It has been reserved for a Yankee commander to prescribe the assassination of a rival ruler as a military duty, and to give directions for its effective execution in a general order. In three short years the Federals have so far parted from the ways of thought which are followed in the rest of Christendom, that they not only do what other men deem monstrous and horrible, but they have ceased to recognise in such conduct anything that is blameworthy or even exceptional. Federal politicians have learned to mea-

sure all morality by the standards of the counting-house, and to treat virtue and vice as a mere question of profit and loss. They probably flatter themselves that political crimes can be committed with impunity ; and therefore they cea?e to be crimes which a smart Yankee should avoid. If the recent expedition had succeeded in the assassination of the Southern President, the soul of the Confederacy would have been gone. If it failed, no harm was done beyond the loss ofafewmen. They are confident that the Southerners are powerless to retaliate in kind; and they know that even if such an opportunity were open to him, no prospect of advantage to his country could prevail upon General Lee to stoop to so foul a deed. But though they are probably safe from retribution in this direction, it will come upon them more surely from a quarter whence they do not look for it. They cannot borrow the ferocity andjthe treachery of the Red Indian, whose soil they occupy, for use against their enemies alone. Military and civil society are closely interwoven in America. The thirst for blood, the recklessness of human misery, the contempt for moral restraints which are being cherished in war^will surely extend to politics. Tbe Federals foave learnt to carry out, as against the Southerners, the ambitious views of a political party by devastation as ruthless, by attempts at murder as shameless as the world has ever seen. Will their party contests among themselves be more moderate1 or humane for the examples they have set and the morality they have practically preached? The history of the neighboring land of Mexico might have shown them how cruelty to an enemy reacts upon the national character, and punishes those who practise it by converting every political struggle into a bloodthirsty war. Symptoms are not, wanting that the same lesson is soon to be again taught to mankind on a larger scale and in a more startling example.