PRESIDENT DAVIS' PROCLAMATION.

Southland Times, Volume I, Issue 43, 7 April 1863, Page 1 (Supplement)

PRESIDENT DAVIS' PROCLAMATION.

(From the London Times, Jan. 13.) The President of the Southern Confederacy has marked the close of a fn&v of extraordinary success by the issue of a i official document, the perusal of which must inspire every weilwisher to the cause of national independence for which he is contending with sincere regret. In this proclamation General Butler is denounced as an outlaw and common enemy of mankind, and the officer who may capture him is directed to put him to death at once by hanging. The commissioned officers under his command are declared not entitled to be considered as soldiers engaged m honorable warfare, but as robbers and criminals deserving death, and each of them when captured is to be reserved for execution. The common soldiers are not to be included m this sentence, as being involuntary agents, but all negroes taken m aims are to be delivered over to their several States to be there dealt with, and ail officers serving with them are to be put to death. Mr Davis is at no loss for reasons to justify these sanguinary menaces. He alleges m particular the case of William i 3. i&umford, a citizen of New Orleans, who was said to have been executed by the order of General Butler for pulling down the United States' flag m that city before its occupation by the Federals. Mr Davis further alleges the outrages committed by General Butler m New Orleans. Tne imprisonment m chains and subjection to hard labor of uuresistii/g prisoners and non-combatants, the outrages on women and the cruelty of their imprisonment, the close confinement of prisoners of war, the piun'lei of the inhabitants, the refusal of egress from New Orleans, the driving away slaves from the plantations, and the comoelling the planters to share their ! crops with General Butler and his brother, and the confiscation of the property m Louisiana west of the Mississippi, the incitement of slaves to revolt, and the Emancipation Proclamation of General Lincoln — such is the catalogue ol injuries which the Southern [ President submits to the opinion of the civilized world as justifying him m initiating the dreadful policy of retaliatiou. The catalogue is indeed a heavy one, but we trust that iv this instance the opinion of Europe will not give its sanction to the policy of the Confederate Slates. No measure could possibly be more ill-timed. We receive Mr Davis's Proclamation, denouncing death without mercy upon General Butler and his officers, by the same mail which informs us that Geueral Butler has been relieved by the President from. the command whiuh he has disgraced, and that another commander, whose language is, at any rate, more conciliatory, has been Bent m his stead. Mr Daris denounces death upon all officers serving with, armed negroes against the South, and justifies the sentence by an appeal to Mr Lincoln's Proclamation, at a time when everybody is uncertain whether that Proclamation is to* be put m force or not. If it was necessary to act at all m this sense,

would it not have been better to postpone so stern and terrible a resolution to the very last moment possible? We have set out the heads of the reasons given m Mr Davis's proclamation for refusing quarter to captured enemies. We will not presume to say that there are not m this enumeration of offences some things contrary to international law, as there are assuc d'y many things plainly repugnant to tile most obvious dictates of justice and mercy. But a mere violation of the usages of war is not enough to justify, m the eye of reason and good seise, recourse to the. last and ino.-t desperate remedy — retaliation. There is, no doubt, m the history of a!) wars, if they were truly and dispassioiui.ely written, a vast number of tilings done and suffered, which are distinrll)'- denounced, even by the loose belligerent morality of the law of nations. The greater humanity and refinement of the times m which Wi> live occasion us to look with horror upon many *>rurli.;c:3 Srhieh were almost matters of course m the wars of Europe a hundred years ago. We rejoice at, this great tenderness of feeling as a step towards the alleviation of the miseries of mankind, but this sympathy will be a curse instead of a blessing, if it is to cad each belligerent to sit m judgment on the acts of his adversary, to attempt m the very heat and fury of the contest I to submit those acts as revealed to m a \ by ex parte evidence to a calm judicial scrutiny, and, having found him guilty m his absence, to pronounce against him a sentence of death. And death against whom t Mr Davis condemns General iiutler to die, but threatened men live long, and it would be a strange chance indeed which enabled the President of the Southern States to put his sentence into execution. Very different, however, is the sentence of death pronounced against the whole of General Butler's oilicers. That sentence the South will have an opportunit)* at some time of putting into effect against some one or other, perhaps a person wholly innocent of any of the wrongs complained of, perhaps a person who had only done what he did under thp compulsion of military obodie'ir.e. His inno^fine.e will avail him nothing ; he is to die to expiate the fault of one over whose actions he had no control, and whose orders he could not dispute. But this is only the beginning. For every life that is t:ikeu j under this Proclamation the Southern President well knows th it auoth >r life will be required. He knows that by pit ing to dea fa. priscecs taken m war. m order to avenge the faults of th lr j Generals, he is inaugurating a slafe of things under which quarter will neither be given nor asked, and which will di -grade that war the us igi s of which he is ho anxious to maintain into an indiscriminate and merciless butchery. Mr Davis ought also to remember that, though England an i France have conceded to the Southern States the position of belligerents, it oehoves t hem to exercise their belligerent riirhrs with til--' utmost forbearance and moderation. We have not scrupled to «• press our .sympathy wiih Cue South m their s>iru-.i!^lis lor national indcdepeudeiice, and so strong h:is been thai. sympathy that it has overpowered the repulsion inspired by the institution of slavery. But the south should remember t licit, they were ths first to duw me sword m this quarrel, that they ro.se. against an established government m the exercise of its ieu;al functions, th it they obtained by the agvucv of traitors m that government, a considerable supply of arms and money, and thut that Union which they seek to dissolve is, as ev.'iits have proved, the dearest wish j of every American heart. These things j are provocations of no ordinary inagni- I Hide, and m some degree extenuate, | though they can m no uegree jusrifY, j the outrages which have followed the ' solitary Northern success, the capture of New Orleans. Better to bear a little longer even such iniquities as those of which they complain than to aggravate the horrors of a coutest already sufficiently dreadful by licensing a system of murder from which neither partycan reap any possible advantage, and which can only tend to envelope the American name m everlasting ignornany. No doubt, it may be suggested as an excuse lor for the south thit they have the fate ot St. Domingo before tlieir eyes, and have the must dteadtul apprehensions of the lot which may overtake their homes, their wives, arid their children, m case oi a negro insurrection. But this is oul 1 oi the chances oi" war wnieh ttiey mast have wed weighed and considered before they raised the flag of insurrection. Their own valour and success have created the danger by driving the North to despair, and they ought to meet it with the calmness of men resolved and prepared, not with the fury of surprise and panic. If the North, which we will not vet believe, shouil carry out its dreadful threat, the evil will not be averted by killing the off) ers who may be; detatched on a service whicu is not m itstdt contrary to the usages of war. They will not be deterred from undertaking it, and, should they be sain, their death will be bloodily avenged. Lastly, Mr Davis ought to consider whether it is worth his while, iv order to gratify thejusdy incensed feelings of the South, to cut off trom bimself that European sympathy wlii^h he now possesses, and to appear before the civil ized world as the first to convert an honorable contest into a war of extermination. We earnestly hope to rind that this plan of retaliation has remained unexecuted, and that the horror of massacre m cold biood may not be added to the miseries of a contest between men ot the same language, the same lineage and the same country.