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Updated: August 7, 2024
As I walked, I saw several dark figures dodging from tree to tree, and all that night my dusky-hued friends kept vigilant watch and ward about our cottage. The next morning many valiant war-men in time of peace, but peace-men in time of war, told me what brave fighting they would have done for my protection had I but called upon them to do so.
The real anti-patriots are not the peace-men, but the selfish and unscrupulous money-makers, the idle rich, the dissolute, the ill-mannered, all those who put private interest or passion above the public weal, help to weaken national strength and solidarity, and bring our country's name into disrepute. Patriotism must not merge into conceit and blind self-satisfaction.
Yet when I would look away, through the vista to where the light of the great fire in the savanna camp played luridly upon the Indian lodges, or, nearer at hand, upon the savages gathering the wood to burn us with, this ghastly file of the dead drew me irresistibly, and I must needs pass the fearsome figures in review again, marking the staring eyes and unnatural postures, and the circular blood-black patches on the heads of the three peace-men whom Yeates and the Catawba had scalped.
Never smile, my dears, and hint that I had found me a new heart of mercy since that ambush-killing of the three Cherokee peace-men in the lone valley of the western mountains. We did but give the savages a dole out of their own store of cruel cunning and ferocity. But as for these my trackers, three of them, at least, were soldiers and men of my own race. I could not do it. "No," said I, firmly.
You can't fight properly with any weapon but your life. Death is not the only thing that passes by the peace-man. He remains alive, but he also remains ignorant. All peace-men are really women in disguise, and all women are utterly superfluous to-day. We only know men. People who disapprove of War shall have no part in peace. The peace shall be ours who suffered for it, and only we have earned it.
In addition to these difficulties the South also burdened him with an untimely and compromising friendship. The Charleston "Courier," with reckless frankness, declared that the armies of the Confederacy and the peace-men at the North were working together for the procurement of peace; and said: "Our success in battle insures the success of McClellan.
The scheme, if well managed, threatened to be dangerous, by uniting the Peace-men, the Copperheads, and such of the Republicans as love peace better than principle, in one opposition, willing to make a peace that would be inconsistent with the safety and dignity of the country.
The procession drove straight to the pole unresisted, the hostile crowd parting to let them pass; and a tall man John Platt amid some mutterings, climbed the pole, reached the halliards, and the mongrel banners were on the ground. Some of the peace-men, rallying, drew weapons on 'the invaders, and a musket and a revolver were taken from them by soldiers at the very instant of firing.
He gave to my address unqualified support, and I had no doubt that the majority of my audience sympathized with my views. There were, however, copperheads, and peace-men at any price, and gradually there appeared a more troublesome class of men who professed to be for the prosecution of the war, but criticized and condemned all the means employed.
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