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THE PACIFICATOR:
% journal to. flic Interests of tljr Catholic Cljurelj in tbe Confederate states.
*‘ M I T T R G I.i A D I U M T U U M IN V A G I N A M R T 3 > R US PACTS R R .'VR <' U M.”
YOL. I.
%| |j I ' t | •, | ♦
A JOURNAL DEVOTED TO TIIE
W>iTK RESTS' OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH
• • IN THIS
CON FEDERATE STATES OF AMERICA.
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An Address to the People of the
United States in Behalf of Peace.
liY A CATHOLIC HI VINE.
Fellow Christians and Friend:;:
[ now come to the consideration of
the third particular announced in the
preamble of this address. Auexpediat'/
Admitting that the war, and especially
the continuation of the war, is lawful
and just—-admitting that it is proper
and becoming—there remains yet one
important question, Is it expedient/
Lj it calculated to advance your inter
ests ? Can you expect to derive tiny
benefit front it? Or, in the technical
American phraseology, Will it pay '/
This part of the inquiry appears tome
the clearest of all, and I address it to
you with so much the more confidence,
ah I know that you are competent'
judges in this matter, as your nation
has acquired and justly earned great
reputation among till tae nations of the
icnrth for kectmess and acuteness in de
mising and conducting enterprises that
will pay. In this instance, however,
you have deviated, wol'uliy deviated,
from your usual standard, and engaged
in a speculation that will not pay, or
will pay only in shame, disgrace, ruin
avid bankruptcy; so that, as this unfor
tunate war is unjust and unbecoming
on your side, it is also supremely ruin
ous and subversive of all your best in
terests.
We may conduct the enquiry' urtrleiv
the two following heads: Il.au the war
hitherto paid? Will it pay better for
the future ?
Has the war thus far paid ? I can
nut conceive that you can make of tin
war anything but either glory, or land,
•or money. Let us s e whether the
war has given you a fair equivalent in
any of these particulars. Glory, it is
true, is not money', and although it is
tl.ie peculiar characteristic of vour na
tion to he f ind of money, I know, also,
that glory and pride are far from being
.*n element lore gn to your national
predilections. 1 ask you, then, my
friends, have you reaped any gl try
from this uniortjnate and unnatural
<’«}ntest ? The page of history will re
cord great battles, in which, without
any dissenting voice, you came oft'
mieotirl best, and gathered crowns, hot
of laurel, but of cypress. The two
battles of Manassas, of Fredericks
burg, of Chanccilorsville, of Shiloh, of
Olustee, will go down to posterity as
very inglorious monuments of your
valor and of your military genius. The
battles which you claim as great, vieto
were not victories-—positive victo
ries ; they were negative victories, in
which you merely arrested the inarch
of a victorious army. I allude to the
battles es 'Sharpsluirg and Gettysburg.
•But now se-e the frightful disadvan
tages under which your opponents have
been laboring, and that will prove to
you that you have no glory to expect
in this bloody field. One of our fight
ing Irishmen would never enter the
lists so as to be three against one. If
he saw, even in the worse case of clan
nish feuds, two men against, one, he
would never join the two to fight three
against one ; he would deem this too.
mean ; a sense of fairness and honor
would rather make him take up for
Bio weak side, to make two against
two.. See, now, what you have done.
Ton form of population, in round num
bers, twenty millions against ten,
and of tltese ten nearly the half con
sist of colored people, essentially non
combatant,?., In addition to this, you
have called to your aid the stragglers
of all nations, and have enticed them
by bounties, enormous bounties, hither
to unknown in the history of any war
fare. These foreigners form a notable
portion of your armies;- and the way,
by the by, in which you enlist them,
will never add anything to the glory
ami moral standing' of the nation.
\ou have also enticed or kidnapped
nearly two hundred thousand negroes
from the South, whotfi you use as
breastworks. In addition to these ad
vantanges, you have a powerful navy
blockading every port of th» South,
and subjecting the Confederacy to
awful odds, wnich, independently of
everything else, would have made
every impartial man say that the con
test was too unequal, and could not
last a year. In fact, you thought that
you would accomplish your task in
three months, and many a deluded
foreigner have we met among your
prisoners, who felt confident they en
listed for a contest of three or four
months, with a clear and undeniable
prospect of victory and success. How
differently have events turned ! You
have been now for nearly four years
using all your resources, ransacking
every soldier you could find, building
a most formidable navy, putting in the
field most numerous and flourishing
armies, and for what purpose ? You
have yet accomplished nothing. Rus
sia attacked Poland several times, un- i
dt-r similar circumstances; that is,
with large against small numbers, and
with all tbe improvements of modern
warfare, against unprepared and al
most unarmed opponents, left to their
valor alone. But Russia finished the
job in a few months, and reaped no
glory in it. But you, with every ad
vantage in your hands, have yet, after
four long years, done nothing, or next
to nothing, in putting down the so
called rebellion that had no arms, no
navy 10 bring them from abroad, no
miliary supplies, no organized govern
ment. Whoever will reflect upon this,
will not hesitate to say, that your sole
want of success in this campaign,
under such circumstances, is a foul
s ain on the escutcheon of your nation,
and that it is folly for you to think of.
(making here a harvest of glory. You
|imve reaped only disgrace ; and this,
[my friends, is the opinion of all the
|nations of Europe. You boast, it is
true, of your unparalleled victories,
but nobody believes in them ; and the
glory you claim is of the very nature
of the sound of the cannons that cele
brate those victories, it passes away in
a moment —the sound does not reach
Europe ; and you will scarcely find a
respectable paper there that will ad
mit your victories, or give you praise
for then). But you will find many ad
miring t(ie fortitude, magnanimity and
generosity of the Southern people,
under the circumstances in which they
are placed; so that the war has not
paid, and cannot pay, the North, in
glory and military laurels.
The war has not paid you better in
lands than in glory. It is true, you
have made some acquisitions of land.
You possess llil'ton Head, and Fort
•Pulaski, and Tybce Island, Fernandi
naand St. Augustine. You have, also,
some few cities on the seaboard, the
Gulf, and on the Mississippi. But,
now, I ask you, is this a fair remunera
tion for the blood that has been spilt,
arid the treasure that has been wasted ?
You have possessioii of those places,
but how ? By means of an armed
force, the support and the maintenance
of wnich cost you incomparably more
than the places themselves are worth.
If you wanted land, you could have
bought more land in the South with
the money you spend in one day to
keep ail'those places, than you possess
now. There was an abundance of
land to be bad, in Florida, for instance,
at half a dollar an acre. You could
have, with a small portion of the money
you spend therd every day, purchased
more territory 'than you possess now,
and would have a peaeuable possession
of it, and you would have it without
having spilt a drop of blood. You
have spilt more blood than would be
necessary to make all your Southern
possessions s&irn in that rel liquid. O,
AUGUSTA, GA., OCTOBER i% 1804.
what a bad speculation you have made!
Does not prudence tell you to with
draw from it at once as soon as possi
ble? You have burnt your fingers too
badly in this silly speculation, tbe
more so as the land you occupy is in
general a nest of yellow fever, and a
hot-bed of mosquitoes, and an infec
tious.group of swamps, or a pile of dry
and arid lands. If those lands had
been such a desirable possession, the
speculators, with whom your cities
swarm, would have found it out before
the war, and would have hastened to
settle* the country ; but they kept aloof
from it, and this is tbe reason of the
comparatively slim and scattered popu
lation of the South. Agree, then, with
me, that you have made in this war a
very bad speculation in lands; give
up, then, at once, the attempt as a com
plete failure; and if you had used in
reference to that war the manner or
prudence which you display in all
other matters, not only you would not
have given so much blood and treasure
for the little land you now hold in tbe
Southern country, but you would have
been unwilling to receive it even as a
gift.
Let us pass to tbe. money considera
tion, which is indeed tiie principal
one in this matter. It is probable that
many of you subscribed to the war in
order not tef lose the lucrative trade of
the South. A strange way you took,,
indeed, to make money—plundering,
devastating, exterminating the South
,in order to make it yield money; that
[was the same as killing the hen that
flaid the golden eggs. Let us, then,
reckon together the money you have
made by the war. Do you remember
how, some'years ago, Andrew Jackson
laid at the nation’s door a complaint, a
heavy complaint. He was lamenting
over an evil, a great national evil,
fraught with fatal consequences; an evil
that was to be remedied forthwith !
What was that evil? It was an over
flowing treasury. A strange evil,indee i,
it A’as that caused great ijpuMifiipept
among all nations of Europe, and made
them jealous and envious of the pros
perity of America. There was then
too much money in the treasury, and
it was hard to tell how to- dispose of
that surplus in the treasury. 1 can
tell you, my friends, although I do not
claim to be a prophet, or the son. of a
[prophet, that you will never more com-
Iplain of that evil. The evil is cured,
radically cured, never more to return.
In the place of that surplus in the
treasury, so hard to dispose of, there is
now saddled on you a small debt of—
what shall I say ? Some say four
thousand millions, some say throe
thousand, but 1 will say it is certainly
more than two thousand millions.
This will be quite enough to make you
comprehend what great profits you
have realized from the war. The pub
lic expenditure of the country has been
a few millions per year for a long time,
when America could boast, indeed, of
having the cheapest Government in the
world, if not the best. In these latter
years, before the war, owing to various
causes, it amounted to one hundred
millions. This was the yearly expen
diture of the Government. It has now
swelled to such an enormous amount
that the interest alone of the debt is
far greater than the largest yearly ex
penditure of the last years preceding
the war, and the expenditure of a day
is now greater than the yearly expen
diture iu the good times of the Repub
lic. All this vast amount of money
now must come on you, and be drawn
| on you, in the shape of taxes director
! indirect. Taxation has become enor
: mous, and will become more so. The
j indirect taxation has become already
j intolerable; farewell cheap coffee,
| cheap tea, cheap wineS, cheap clothing.
Everything has become throe or four
times dearer than it was before the
war. It is true for a. similar cause
things are yet worse with us, chiefly
on account of the blockade of our
ports; but our misfortunes are of no
avail to you, and cannot make your own
disappear. The South fights through
necessity, and must submit to the sad
consequences, having no choice in the
I matter ; but you fight through choice,
! and you must be blind indeed if you do
! not see the fully that has made you
I contract, for nothing, an enormous
| debt which will weigli on your chil
j dren for a long series of generations,
| and will rob you of the fruit of your
j industry for a long; lapse of ages.
Will the war pay better for the fu- j
ture? I say no, my friends, emphat- j
ically, no. The war will not pay bet- ]
ter, whether you succeed in your plans j
of subjugation, or not. In the latter j
supposition it is evident that you have J
only ruin and an increased indebted- j
ness to expect, before giving up the j
subjugation of the South as impossible. I
The longer you persist in this foolish
war, abstracting from the cruelties,
atrocities, barbarities and awful suf
ferings of every kind that will be en
tailed on innumerable innocent beings,
the more frightful will be the waste of
treasure, and the more enormous will
be tin 1 debt to bo borne by you. War is
a time in which the business of produc
tion, as writers on political ecotn my
say, either stops altogether or is dread
fully crippled, and destruction goes on
at fearful rates. Every moment that
you persist in this foolish contest costs
you millions. Why such a waste?
The sooner you stop this the better.
The continuation of the war cannot in
any measure, repair the losses already
incurred; it can only make them
greater, and it. will make them certain
ly greater in the very proportion in
which the war lasts longer.
And now let me tell you that it is
probable, it is exceedingly probable,
that you will never succeed in your
plans of subjugation, and that the war
will be a complete failure for you, as
it was for England when she under
took to subjugate the colonics. Os
course 1 am no prophet, and we have
only prudence, reason and the expe
rience of the past to judge of the fu
ture. How much have you accom
plished in nearly four years of des
perate fighting ? Very little, or rather
nothing at all, towards a final subjuga
tion. You hold only those places
where you have armed soldiers, gun
boats and a formidable artillery. You
have had possession, for a time, of a few
places besides those you have now.
The moment your armed soldiers left
thiitcuHplaces, they returned to the Con
federacy, and so j’ou have, properly
speaking, done nothing at all towards
subjugation; but you have, on the con
trary, put innumerable and insur
mountable obstacles to their subjuga
tion,by rousing among the peopkyi spirit
of animosity, hatred and horror against
you, which must remove at an infinite
distance the prospect of a speedy ter
miimtion of the war by the sole force
of.arms. You bad imagined that the
South wou'd yield through starvation.
See how egregiously you have been
deceived. The prospects of starvation
are as distant now as they were on the
very eve of tbe war. l r ou thought
you could easily conquer a naked pop
ulation. You have also been sadly
mistaken ; and the only naked persons
I have seen during the war were
among your own men, prisoners in
Andersonviile—-whether it was be
cause their clothing had been worn
away absolutely, or because their fel
low prisoners had robbed them of their
clothes, as some said. You think the
South lias put in the field its last man.
You are under very false impressions.
YYe see yet plenty of people in the
streets of our cities, and on the public
roads, and they may yet increase and
thicken the ranks of the armies that
confront yours. What if the South,
seeing her cause desperate, would
grant freedom to her male colored
population in order to send them
against you ? Many there are among
them who, in their hearts, burn against
the unjust invaders of the Southern
soil with the same fire of indignation
that your devastations have enkindled
in the breasts of their masters, and if
offered a portion of tiie soil as the re
ward of their exertions, they would
stand cheerfully by their masters in
order to defend it. But you are yet
far from having driven the South to
this last resource and alternative,
which .1 presume will never be neces
sary. All this must convince you that
the end of the war by subjugation is
either impossible, or is at an immense
distance from you, which must absorb
a frightful number of millions of dol
lars before anything can bo accom
plished; and this, assuredly, must
drive you to the conclusion that the
war for you is decidedly a losing game,
in which you sink capital every day,
and from which you can expect nothing
iu return.
Let us now take the other hypothesis
j for the sake of pursuing the argument.
NO. 3.
In the event of the subjugation nl the
South, you would obtain no remunera
tion ; you would have only an additional
source of expenditures. In that sup
position, which is a mere castle in tiie
air, vou will have to garr's >n all the
cities of the South. This alone will
impose on you a frightful taxation, in
addition to the debt already incurred
t‘> obtain that result—a debt which
will increase every year probably by
two thousand millions of dollars. 'This,
thereiere, will requite a pove-iul
standing army, which, i idependi ntly
of other innumerable inconveniences
that the fathers of American I de
pendence wished to avoid at aliiu.z nils,
will cause a constaut drain on the
treasury, and will create a frightful
expenditure, the same as in war- tunes
for an illimited number of years, m of
ages, if things last in that same state.
Can a more foolish waste and squan
dering of treasure be iiua«-ii.cd ?
Think not that the production "f the
South will constitute a good offset
against this expenditure. J n the event
of subjugation, the production of the
South will stop at least for a long
period. YVho will cultivate the cotton
which was the chief produce of tho
South ? The colored populatit n. if left
to itself, will not probably raise enough
to supply its own clothing, as appears
manifestly from the state of the West
India Islands, where these people are
left to themselves.
'All these considerations show, with
the greatest, evidence, that having
made nothing by the war, you will not
make anything mpre for the future,
but will continue to destroy your own
property, and to increase the burden
of taxation. By stopping the war at
once, and making a treaty of .peace
with the South, you will take the only
way that can promote your pecu
niary interests. If you offer peace on
reasonable and hm-.m-ablo terms, per
haps, you could oi tain free trade with
tin* Smith, which will secure to you all
the pecuniary advantages that the
war robbed you of at first, and you
would have a chance to send us again
your calicoes, your knives, your soap,
all your nick-knacks, and even your
wooden nutmegs, if our people are
willing to buy them. But, by persist
ing in this absurd war, you will
only realize, to the very letter, the fol
lowing Irish legend: Once upon a
time, in the city of Kilkenny, a grasd
fight occurred between two cats, in ijv*
sight *of the whole population assem
bled. Such was the animosity, the
rage, the despair of the two combatants,
that they eat each other up to the ts/ils.
Two ignominious, worthless tails were
the only sad remnants of this, the
fiercest combat ever recorded in. tho
history of the feline race.
And now farewell, my friends. I
have supplied you with a subject.of
sound meditation.
THE CONFEDERATE CAUSE T.T IRE
LAND.
The lovers of peace—to say noLI;I:; <r about
fair play—may at length cou.gratsdaL* .hero
selves that the Federal recruiting snrgeant
has begun to find his occupation gone in
Ireland. This desirable cc a summation has
been but slowly brought nbout, many
were the difficulties oncountercd by the way.
These, however, have buen happily sir»
mounted; and it is most, gratifying to add
that Catholics and Protestant a, .the pulpit
and the press, are now uniting their effort*
to tbe cause of peace.
The letter of His ..Holing Pius IX to
Archbishop Hughes .of New York (tho pub
lication of which in the fir.st instance in .
tiie ted the, first serious cheek upon the ex
o ’us from Ireland) is now being reproduced
by the committees of various political so
cieties, and the most elective means am
being used to give b* it all the publicity it.
so entirely deserves, (!opVcs of -that retmurfc
able document are 10 be found on the doofc*
of Catholic places of worship,, and i;»>-t a
Sunday passes but tho e/usile of His HoK
j ness may number its reader« by .many, many
thousand?. In on« conspicuous instance Vi
i forms a portion of tho Mihjcmatter of i*
t large placard—the remainder of the pubK
cation consisting (]*i) of aargu men tali
j paper called a “Caution to Irish Kan;
grants;*’ (2d) b IctUr contributed t,o the
Irishman by tlu late W. F. O'ihica (bring u
nowcrfully written »newer to the ord'Yone of
** t!«»n. Meagher of ih ' 8word”) ; and (3d)
an addr« ss from Mr. John Martin, Mating
and explaining to hit eountrymva the argtt
mentis /hat have convinced him that. Ireland
ought, by every means iu her power to en
dv&vor to bring the war to an end by tho
recognition oi tbe Confederate States ass».»
independent nation. The tone and npirh
of these various writing* and the Inuelich
effect they are owUndsif-vd Vo prodw**