Doo. 108. GEN. MCCLELLAN TO HIS SOLDIERS. HEAD-QUARTERS ARMY OF OCCUPATION, WESTERN VIRGINIA, BEVERLY, VA., July 19, 1861. SOLDIERS OF THE ARMY OF THE WEST: I am more than satisfied with you. You have annihilated two armies, commanded by educated and experienced soldiers, intrenched in mountain fastnesses and fortified at their leisure. You have taken five guns, twelve colors, fifteen hundred stand of arms, one thousand prisoners, including more than forty officers. One of the second commanders of the rebels is a prisoner, the other lost his life on the field of battle. You have killed more than two hundred and fifty of the enemy, who has lost all his baggage and camp equipage. All this has been accomplished with the loss of twenty brave men killed and sixty wounded on your part. You have proved that Union men, fighting for the preservation of our Government, are more than a match for our misguided and erring brothers. More than this, you have shown mercy to the vanquished. You have made long and arduous marches, with insufficient food, frequently exposed to the inclemency of the weather. I have not hesitated to demand this of you, feeling that I could rely on your endurance, patriotism, and courage. In the future I may have still greater demands to make upon you, still greater sacrifices for you to offer. It shall be my care to provide for you to the extent of my ability; but I know now that, by your valor and endurance, you will accomplish all that is asked. Re Soldiers! I have confidence in you, and I trust you have learned to confide in me. member that discipline and subordination are qualities of equal value with courage. I am proud to say that you have gained the highest reward that American troops can receive-the thanks of Congress and the applause of your fellow-citizens. GEO. B. MCCLELLAN, Major-General. Doc. 109. THE STANDING COMMITTEES. On Foreign Affairs.-Messrs. Rhett, Nisbet, Perkins, Walker, Keitt. On Finance.-Messrs. Toombs, Barnwell, Kenner, Barry, McRae. On Commercial Affairs.-Messrs. Memmin ger, Crawford, De Clouet, Morton, Curry. On the Judiciary.-Messrs. Clayton, Withers, Hale, Cobb, Harris. On Naval Affairs.-Messrs. Conrad, Chesnut, Smith, Wright, Owens. On Military Affairs.—Messrs. Bartow, Miles, THE "CONFEDERATE" GOVERNMENT. Sparrow, Kenan, Anderson. On Postal Affairs.-Messrs. Chilton, Boyce, Hill, Harrison, Curry. On Patents.-Messrs. Brooke, Wilson, Lewis, Hill, Kenner. On Territories.-Messrs. Chesnut, Campbell, Marshall, Nisbet, Fearn. On Public Lands.-Messrs. Marshall, Harris, Fearn, Anderson, Wright. On Indian Affairs.-Messrs. Morton, Hale, Lewis, Keitt, Sparrow. On Printing.-Messrs. T. R. R. Cobb, Har rison, Miles, Chilton, Perkins. On Accounts.-Messrs. Owens, DeClouet, Campbell, Smith, Crawford. On Engrossments.-Messrs. Shorter, Wilson, Kenan, McRae, Bartow MESSAGE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS. tlemen of the Congress of the Confederate States of America: Ir message addressed to you at the comcement of the last session contained such information of the state of the Confederacy o render it unnecessary that I should now more than call your attention to such imtant facts as have occurred during the re, and the matters connected with the public ence. have again to congratulate you on the acsion of new members to our Confederation ree and equally sovereign States. Our loved honored brethren of North Carolina and nessee have consummated the action foreand provided for at your last session, and ave had the gratification of announcing, by clamation, in conformity with law, that these es were admitted into the Confederacy. people of Virginia, also, by a majority viously unknown in our history, have ratithe action of her Convention uniting her unes with ours. The States of Arkansas, th Carolina, and Virginia have likewise ted the permanent Constitution of the federate States, and no doubt is entertained Es adoption by Tennessee, at the election to held early in next month. deemed it advisable to direct the removal he several executive departments, with their ives, to this city, to which you have rered the seat of Government. Immediately r your adjournment, the aggressive movets of the enemy required prompt, energetic on. The accumulation of his forces on the omac sufficiently demonstrated that his ts were to be directed against Virginia, from no point could necessary measures for defence and protection be so effectively ded, as from her own capital. The rapid progof events, for the last few weeks, has fully ced to lift the veil, behind which the true cy and purposes of the Government of the ted States had been previously concealed. ir odious features now stand fully revealed. message of their President, and the action heir Congress during the present month, fess their intention of the subjugation of e States, by a war, by which it is impossible attain the proposed result, while its dire mities, not to be avoided by us, will fall double severity on themselves. ommencing in March last, with the affectaof ignoring the secession of seven States, ch first organized this Government; perseng in April in the idle and absurd assumption he existence of a riot, which was to be dised by a posse comitatus; continuing in sucive months the false representation that se States intended an offensive war, in spite conclusive evidence to the contrary, fured as well by official action as by the very s on which this Government is constituted, the President of the United States and his advisers succeeded in deceiving the people of these States into the belief that the purpose of this Government was not peace at home, but conquest abroad; not defence of its own liberties, but subversion of those of the people of the United States. The series of manoeuvres by which this impression was created; the art with which they were devised, and the perfidy with which they were executed, were already known to you, but you could scarcely have supposed that they would be openly avowed, and their success made the subject of boast and self-laudation in an executive message. Fortunately for truth and history, however, the President of the United States details, with minuteness, the attempt to reinforce Fort Pickens, in violation of an armistice of which he confessed to have been informed, but only by rumors, too vague and uncertain to fix the attention of the hostile expedition despatched to supply Fort Sumter, admitted to have been undertaken with the knowledge that its success was impossible. The sending of a notice to the Governor of South Carolina of his intention to use force to accomplish his object, and then quoting from his inaugural address the assurance that "there could be no conflict unless these States were the aggressors," he proceeds to declare his conduct, as just related by himself, was the performance of a promise, so free from the power of ingenious sophistry as that the world should not be able to misunderstand it; and in defiance of his own statement that he gave notice of the approach of a hostile fleet, he charges these States with becoming the assailants of the United States, without a gun in sight, or in expectancy, to return their fire, save only a few in the fort. He is, indeed, fully justified in saying that the case is so free from the power of ingenious sophistry that the world will not be able to misunderstand it. Under cover of this unfounded pretence, that the Confederate States are the assailants, that high functionary, after expressing his concern that some foreign nations had so shaped their action as if they supposed the early destruction of the national Union probable, abandons all further disguise, and proposes to make this contest a short and decisive one, by placing at the control of the Government for the work at least four hundred thousand men, and four hundred millions of dollars. The Congress, concurring in the doubt thus intimated as to the sufficiency of the force demanded, has increased it to half a million of men. These enormous preparations in men and money, for the conduct of the war, on a scale more grand than any which the new world ever witnessed, is a distinct avowal, in the eyes of civilized man, that the United States are engaged in a conflict with a great and powerful nation. They are at last compelled to abandon the pretence of being engaged in dispersing rioters and suppressing insurrections, and are driven to the acknowledgment that the ancient 356 REBELLION RECORD, 1860-61. Union has been dissolved. They recognize the | priated to criminals of the worst dye, and separate existence of these Confederate States, threatened with punishment as such. I had by an interdictive embargo and blockade of all made application for the exchange of these commerce between them and the United States, prisoners to the commanding officer of the enenot only by sea, but by land; not only in my's squadron off Charleston, but that ofships, but in cars; not only with those who cer had already sent the prisoners to New bear arms, but with the entire population of York when application was made. I therefore the Confederate States. Finally, they have re- deemed it my duty to renew the proposal for pudiated the foolish conceit that the inhabitants the exchange to the constitutional commanderof this Confederacy are still citizens of the in-chief of the army and navy of the United United States; for they are waging an indis- States, the only officer having control of the criminate war upon them all, with savage fe- prisoners. To this end, I despatched an officer rocity, unknown in modern civilization. to him under a flag of truce, and, in making the In this war, rapine is the rule; private proposal, I informed President Lincoln of my houses, in beautiful rural retreats, are bom-resolute purpose to check all barbarities on barded and burnt; grain crops in the field are prisoners of war by such severity of retaliaconsumed by the torch, and, when the torch is tion on prisoners held by us as should secure not convenient, careful labor is bestowed to ren- the abandonment of the practice. This onder complete the destruction of every article of munication was received and read by an offeer use or ornament remaining in private dwellings in command of the United States forces, and a after their inhabitants have fled from the out- message was brought from him by the bearer rages of brute soldiery. In 1781 Great Britain, of my communication, that a reply would be when invading the revolted colonies, took pos- returned by President Lincoln as soon as pos session of every district and county near For- sible. I earnestly hope this promised reply tress Monroc, now occupied by the troops of (which has not yet been received) will convey the United States. The houses then inhabited the assurance that prisoners of war will be by the people, after being respected and pro- treated, in this unhappy contest, with that retected by avowed invaders, are now pillaged gard for humanity, which has made such conand destroyed by men who pretend that Vir-spicuous progress in the conduct of modern ginians are their fellow-citizens. Mankind will warfare. As measures of precaution, however, shudder at the tales of the outrages committed and until this promised reply is received, I stl on defenceless families by soldiers of the United retain in close custody some officers captured States, now invading our homes; yet these from the enemy, whom it had been my pleas outrages are prompted by inflamed passions ure previously to set at large on parole, and and the madness of intoxication. But who whose fate must necessarily depend on that of shall depict the horror they entertain for the prisoners held by the enemy. I append a copy cool and deliberate malignancy which, under of my communication to the President and comthe pretext of suppressing insurrection, (said by mander-in-chief of the army and navy of the themselves to be upheld by a minority only of United States, and of the report of the officer our people,) makes special war on the sick, in-charged to deliver my communication. cluding children and women, by carefully-devised measures to prevent them from obtaining the medicines necessary for their cure. The sacred claims of humanity, respected even during the fury of actual battle, by careful diversion of attack from hospitals containing wounded enemies, are outraged in cold blood by a Government and people that pretend to desire a continuance of fraternal connections. All these outrages must remain unavenged by the universal reprehension of mankind. In all cases where the actual perpetrators of the wrongs escape capture, they admit of no retaliation. The humanity of our people would shrink instinctively from the bare idea of urging a like war upon the sick, the women, and the children of an enemy. But there are other savage practices which have been resorted to by the Government of the United States, which do admit of repression by retaliation, and I have been driven to the necessity of enforcing the repression. The prisoners of war taken by the enemy on board the armed schooner Savannah, sailing under our commission, were, as I was credibly advised, treated like common felons, put in irons, confined in a jail usually appro There are some other passages in the remarkable paper to which I have directed your attention, having reference to the peculiar relations which exist between this Government and the States usually termed Border Slave States, which cannot properly be withheld from notice. The hearts of our people are animated by sentiments toward the inhabitants of these States, which found expression in your enactment refusing to consider them enemies, or authorize hostilities against them. That a very large portion of the people of these States regard us as brethren; that, if unrestrained by the actual presence of large armies, subversion of civil authority, and declaration of martial law, some of them, at least, would joyfully unite with us; that they are, with almost entire unanimity, opposed to the prosecution of the war waged against us, are facts of which daily-recurring events fully warrant the assertion that the President of the United States refuses to recognize in these, our late sister States, the right of refraining from attack upon us, and justifies his refusal by the assertion that the States have no other power than that reserved to them in the Union by the Constitution. Now, one of them having ever 1 ? DOCUMENTS. na State of the Union, this view of the contional relations between the States and the eral Government is a fitting introduction to ther assertion of the message, that the extive possesses power of suspending the writ abeas corpus, and of delegating that power military commanders at their discretion. 1 both these propositions claim a respect l to that which is felt for the additional ement of opinion in the same paper, that it proper, in order to execute the laws, that Le single law, made in such extreme tenders of citizens' liberty that practically it rees more of the guilty than the innocent, uld to a very limited extent be violated. may well rejoice that we have forever ered our connection with a Government thus trampled on all principles of constional liberty, and with a people in whose sence such avowals could be hazarded. The rations in the field will be greatly extended reason of the policy which heretofore has n secretly entertained, and is now arowed acted on by us. The forces hitherto raised vide amply for the defence of seven States ch originally organized in the Confederacy, s evidently the fact, since, with the excepof three fortified islands, whose defence is ciently aided by a preponderating naval e, the enemy has been driven completely of these stations; and now, at the expiraof five months from the formation of the wernment, not a single hostile foot presses r soil. These forces, however, must necesly prove inadequate to repel invasion by the million of men now proposed by the eneand a corresponding increase of our forces become necessary. The recommendations the raising of this additional force will be tained in the communication of the Secreof War, to which I need scarcely invite r earnest attention. mulated in this Confederacy of agriculturists, JEFFERSON DAVIS. Doc. 110. n my message delivered in April last, I reed to the promise of the abundant crops h which we were cheered. The grain crops, erally, have since been harvested, and the d has proven to be the most abundant ever own in our history. Many believe the supadequate to two years' consumption of our pulation. Cotton, sugar, tobacco, forming a plus of the production of our agriculture, furnishing the basis of our commercial inchange, present the most cheering promises er known. Providence has smiled on the A PROTEST FROM SOUTH CAROLINA. or which extracts the teeming wealth of our in all parts of our Confederacy. It is the more gratifying to be able to give this, because, in need of large and increased Denditure, in support of our army, elevated 1 purified by a sacred cause, they maintain at our fellow-citizens, of every condition of -, exhibit most self-sacrificing devotion. ey manifest a laudable pride of upholding eir independence, unaided by any resources her than their own, and the immense wealth ich a fertilized and genial climate has accu A LETTER FROM L. W. SPRATT. Hon. John Perkins, Delegate from Louisiana: FROM the abstract of the Constitution for the Provisional Government, published in the papers of this morning, it appears that the slave trade, except with the Slave States of North America, shall be prohibited. The Congress, therefore, not content with the laws of the late United States against it, which, it is to be presumed, were re-adopted, have unalterably fixed the subject by a provision of the Constitution. That provision, for reasons equally conclusive, will doubtless pass into the Constitution of the Permanent Government. The prohibition, therefore, will no longer be a question of policy, but will be a cardinal principle of the Southern Confederacy. It will not be a question for the several States, in view of any peculiarity in their circumstances and condition, but will be fixed by a paramount power, which nothing but another revolution can overturn. If Texas shall want labor, she must elect whether it shall be hireling labor or slave labor; and if she shall elect slave labor, she must be content with that only which comes from other States on this continent, and at such prices as the States on this continent shall see proper to exact. If Virginia shall not join the Confederacy of the South, she is at least assured of a market for her slaves at undiminished prices; and if there shall be, as there unquestionably is, a vast demand for labor at the South; and if there shall be, as there unquestionably will be, a vast supply of pauper labor from the North and Europe, and States at the South shall be in danger of being overrun and abolitionized, as the States of the North have been overrun and abolitionized, there must be no power in any State to counteract the evil. Democracy is right, for it has the approval of the world; slavery wrong, and only to be tolerated in consideration of the property involved; and while the one is to be encouraged, therefore the other is to be presented in such attitude as to be as little offensive as it may be to the better sentiment of an enlightened world. We were seasonable agitation of this question. The contest is not between the North and South as geographical sections, for between such sections merely there can be no contest; nor be tween the people of the North and the people of the South, for our relations have been pleasant, and on neutral grounds there is still nothing to estrange us. We eat together, trade together, and practise yet, in intercourse, with great respect, the courtesies of common life. But the real contest is between the two forms of society which have become established, the one at the North and the other at the South. Society is essentially different from government—as different as is the nut from the bur, or the nervous body of the shellfish from the bony structure which surrounds it; and within this Government two societies had become developed as variant in structure and distinct in form as any two beings in animated nature. The one is a society composed of one race, the other of two races. The one is bound together but by the two great social relations of husband and wife and parent and child; the other by the three relations of husband and wife, and parent and child, and master and slave. The one embodies in its political structure the principle that equality is the right of man; the other that it is the right of equals only. The one, embodying the principle that equality is the right of man, expands upon the horizontal plane of pure democracy; the other, embodying the principle that it is not the right of man, but of equals only, has taken to itself the rounded form of a social aristocracy. In the one there is hireling Nor will I be justly chargeable with an un-labor, in the other slave labor; in the one, Such I take to be a fair statement of the principles announced in the earliest utterance of the Southern Republic; and I need scarcely say that I deprecate them greatly. I fear their effects upon the present harmony of feeling; I fear their effects upon the fortunes of the Republic; and I will take the liberty of intervening and of presenting reasons why I think we should not take such action at the present time. I may seem presumptuous, but I have a stake too great to scruple at the measures necessary to preserve it. I take a liberty, without permission, in making you the object of this letter; but our personal relations will assure you that I have but the simple purpose, if possible, to be of service to my country; and if, in representing a measure so offensive, I may seem wanting in respect for the "spirit of the age,' I have but to say that I have been connected with the slave trade measure from the start. I have incurred whatever of odium could come from its initiation; I have been trusted by its friends with a leading part in its advancement; and so situated, at a time when prejudice or a mistaken policy would seem to shape our action to a course inconsistent with our dignity and interests, I have no personal considerations to restrain me, and feel that it is within my province to interpose and offer what I can of reasons to arrest it. |