Below is the OCR text representation for this newspapers page.

84 THE COUNTRYMAN. TURNWOLD, GA., DECEMBER 8, 1862. The Reign of Terror. We have indeed fallen upon evil times. With an outside foe pressing upon us with the avowed object of exterminating our peo pie, white and black, it might be thought that this pressure would make our people a unit ; that they would see the necessity, 1st of the reign of law and order, as our most powerful auxiliary in maintaining our inde pendence ; and 2ndlj, of upholding the hands of our executive chief in the great struggle in which we are engaged, particu larly when his course has at first blush the sanction of law, he being in authority, and in the next place, when it has the sanc tion of the plain letter of the statute, and then of judicial dictum upon the constitu tionality of the law. Proofs are accumulating every day of the dire intent of our foe. One of the more re cent demonstrations is the letter of Arch bishop Hughes counselling more vigor in the yankee government in killing our peo ple, when the hollow-hearted hypocrite who presumes to be the vice gerent of God in about the 2nd degree—he being next to the pope—professes to teach the command ment, Thou shalt not kill. The Augusta Christian Advocate has re cently received a batch pf Northern relig ious journals. As the Advocate remarks, all these journals “ breathe out threatenings and slaughter—applaud the vindictive pol icy of their government to the echo—aud seem to think that war, and arson, and plun der, and murder, even of women and chil dren, is an innocent method of treatment for those who have dared to believe that the rights of a government are founded in the will of the governed.” These sentiments come from several Christian Advocates and the N.Y.Observer. The proposition of the N.' Y. Evening Post to exterminate the negro race on the American Continent, is going the rounds of all the papers. This comes from one of the highest organs of that Chris tian philanthropy which so long spent itself in sympathy for the slave. Such are the feelings ot Christians,North-protestants and papists. God save us, then, from Northern sinners. But while this is true of our yankee ene mies, what is going on among ourselves? In the first place, we have a radical, revo lutionary governor, who if he could but get the people to back him in it, would get up a revolution on the Conscript Act, when our own representatives in congress voted for it, and when our oivn supreme court has de clared it constitutional. Get up this revo lution, and there would be 3 governments— the U. S., the C. S., and the State-—claim ing our allegiance, and between the .3, it would be quite strange if the necks of any of us escaped the halter. And not only is Gov. Brown injuring us in this way, but see from the following extract from the Augusta Advocate what he and all others who are warring upon president Davis’s administration are doing for ns : “ Another fact that we learn from these hateful sheets is, that they eagerly seize ev ery item that they can construe into a token of our weakness, exhaustion, or disposition to yield the contest, and ostentatiously give such herns vent, as inducements for push ing the war with renewed vigor. Thus, one of the papers publishes in full ‘ P. W. A.’s’ account of our shoeless and blanketless ar my, and takes courage from the facts set forth. Little souls ! they know not how to appreciate the spirit of herops. Miserable muck worms ! they cannot comprehend the noble spirit of freemen, which can sacrifice everything, and fight in rags, and hungry and athirst, for home and country and lib erty. Let the false prophets read the les son aright. It. means that we are not to be subdued. We know how to suffer, even how to die, hut not how to yield to yan kee domination. But such statements are crumbs of comfort to them. And the follow ing editorial paragraph from the Chicago paper shows who they are among ourselves, that sustain the hopes of our bitter enemy, with the idea that counter-revolutions and anarchy are impending in our land. The title is, ‘ Georgia repudiating Confederate Authority,’ and the editor says : * * Notwithstanding the care taken to con ceal the fact of the great dissatisfaction of the state of Georgia with the rebel govern ment, evidence will now and then appear. Not long since, a conscript was discharged by a Georgia judge, who boldly declared the Conscription act illegal and void. We have not heard that thejudge was molested. But here is stronger evidence. In an arti cle about differences between the State of Virginia and the Confederate Government, the Richmond Examiner of the 6th, says : Such a correspondence, for instance, as that between the state of Georgia, which quietly prohibits the enforcement of the Conscript law in its limits, and the Confedetate Gov ernment, which pocketed the prohibition, will never see the light, for it will never be un dertaken.’ ” If this and similar outgiviugs from the Northern press, do not prove that the fac tious opposition to the Administration in Georgia, is giving “ aid and comfort” to the enemy, then I do not know what “ aid and comfort” ale*. But this is not all. There seems to be no safety for person or property in Georgia. Gov. Brown began, some time ago, his un lawful seizures. Now the legislature is dis posed to clothe him with supreme authori ty in this regard, that he may go about as a roaring lion, seeking whom be may de vour. All this is clearly unconstitutional, and should be, and will be resisted before the judicial tribunals : and those tribunals should begin to nerve, themselves up, now, to a discharge of their duties. I am not done yet.—The Milledgevillc correspondent of the Southern Confederacy wrote, a week or two ago, that some gentle man (I know not whojwho had occupied high official position, had been heard to declare that extortion ought to justify the killing of any one guilty of it. With the general im pression among our people that all high price is extortion, who then would be safe? Touching this matter of extortion (real and imaginary) charges to grand juriesfrom the bench have been given, whose tendency was to encourage lawless violence. The press has been guilty in the same regard. Even the old, staid, conservative Recorder intimated, not long since, that some of the overgrown fortunes made in Atlanta during this war, might beseized and divided among the soldiery. The Macon Telegraph can see nothing but ‘ fun’ in the effects to be produced by the resolution authorizing Gov. Brown to ‘ seize’—that is, to rob. There will be a great running of all supplies out of the state to avoid seizufe, the Telegraph intimates, and there will be great destitu tion in the markets, and very -unhappy re sults will follow : but the Telegraph sees only ‘ fun’ in it all: it does not (so to speak) care a darn : and why ? Because the edi tor is a ‘ buyer’ and not a ‘ seller.’ For my part, I can see no fun in all the matters set forth in this article. It is fast coming to this—that we are to have no law, no order, no government but the govern ment of the mob. And it matters but lit tle in its consequences whether this mob is led by Gov. Brown, or some one who has no official position. Our whole sky itf filled with portentous lowerings Let our people all gather once more in the ark of the constitution and laws, and having done our duty in this re gard, trust our ark to the God who rules the storm.