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A Sampler of Civil
War Literature |
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Retaliation
Harper's Weekly, February 18,
1865 |
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| With a fine tact of simple
honesty the President, in his little speech at the opening of the Fair in Baltimore, said
exactly what we all wished to hear. The massacre at Fort Pillow had raised the question in
every mind, does the United States mean to allow its soldiers to be butchered in cold
blood? The President replies, that whoever is good enough to fight for us is good enough
to be protected by us: and that in this case, when the facts are substantiated, there
shall be retaliation. In what way we can retaliate it is not easy to say. There is no
evidence from Richmond, and there will be none, that Forrest’s murders differ from
those of Quantrell. On the other hand, we must not forget that the same papers which
brought the President’s speech promising retaliation brought us also the return of
the rebel General in Florida, containing, for the relief of friends at home, the names and
injuries of our wounded men in his hands, and the list included the colored soldiers of
the Fifty-fourth and Fifty-fifth Massachusetts regiments. But if public opinion has justified a stronger policy from the
beginning—if the criminally stupid promises of M’Clellan and Halleck to protect
slavery and to repel the negroes coming to our lines had never been made, we should not
now be confronted with this question, because the rebels would never have dared to
massacre our soldiers after surrender. But yet to be deterred from retaliation from fear
of still further crimes upon the part of the rebels is simple inhumanity. Let us either at
once release every colored soldier and the officer of their regiments from duty, or make
the enemy feel that they are our soldiers. It is very sad that rebel prisoners of war
should be shot for the crimes of Forrest. But it is very sad, no less, that soldiers
fighting for our flag have been buried alive after surrendering, and it is still sadder
that such barbarities should be encouraged by refraining from retaliation. Do we mean to
allow Mr. Jefferson Davis, or this man Forrest, or Quantrell, to dictate who shall, and
who shall not, fight for the American flag? The massacre at Fort Pillow is a direct
challenge to our Government to prove whether it is in earnest or not in emancipating
slaves and employing colored troops. There should be no possibility of mistake in the
reply. Let the action of the Government be as prompt and terrible as it will be final.
Then the battles of this campaign will begin with the clear conviction upon the part of
the rebels that we mean what we say; and that the flag will protect to the last, and by
every means of war, including retaliation of blood, every soldier who fights for us
beneath it.
Harper's Weekly,
February 18, 1865 |
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