Lieutenant General Grant has extended and advanced his line to Hatcher’s
Run, below Petersburg, so as to materially affect the insurgent
communication with North Carolina. The operation cost a severe battle,
but the advantage gained is supposed to be remunerative. Ice in the
rivers and harbors has delayed some of the troops sent forward to
re-enforce General Terry in his operations against Wilmington.
The return of the so-called peace commissioners to Richmond seems to have
been made the occasion for a vigorous effort to revive the flagging
resolution of the insurgents, by exaggerating the consequences of our
success. I give you what comes to us as an abstract of a speech of J. P.
Benjamin, which, I think, betrays a consciousness that the rebel cause
is desperate. Our private information from Richmond is that the panic
existing there does not yield to the remedies applied by the insurgent
physicians.
Charles Francis Adams. &c., &c., &c., London.
(The same, mutatis mutandis, to all our
principal ministers in Europe.)
[From the Richmond Whig of February 10,
1865.]
Mr. Benjamin’s speech.
Mr. Benjamin was then introduced. He said: The animation that
pervades the meeting-, the cheers with which you greet the defiance
of our foemen, the flush that tingles in your cheeks at the
proposition that we, freemen, should bow the neck to. the
conqueror’s yoke-all give assurance that the fires of freedom burn
unquenchably in your souls. How great the change of a week ago! Then
despondency and gloom pervaded all things. Men, querulous at
disappointments, fretful at reverses, asked whether peace was
attainable but by continued warfare; then, the wish being father to
the thought, they held that it was our indisposition to negotiate,
rather than the objectionable terms of the foeman, that was in the
way. Now, cheerful voices are heard all round; now, hope beams upon
all countenances; now, the cheering, the ennobling influence of our
glorious women sheds its influence upon our cause, and leads us on
in the paths of duty and honor. What is the cause of this sudden
change in our affairs?
Have we found allies, as our fathers did? Has any European ship of
state swung loose from the icy fetters of timidity and indifference?
Just the reverse. There comes across the waters no voice that any
aid is to be had. What, then, is the cause of all this change? It is
the knowledge which has at last come home to the hearts of the
people that they must conquer their freedom or die ! To live a slave
never entered into the mind of a southerner. [Cries of never.] Thank
God, the path of duty is clear before us now, and that this people
knows as one man that we must follow it or perish. Our commissioners
went not as the Venetian ambassadors, with a piece of blank paper,
but with a paper upon which was a word writ by our president; and
that word was independence and self-government. [Cheers.] The single
plain issue before us is to live free and independent, and not
subjected and slaves.
[He read a letter from Lincoln touching reception of commissioners.]
In December Lincoln declared that he was willing to negotiate with
us. He knew that the one thing needful was a severance from that
hateful people to whom we owe the desolation of our land and the
slaughter of our brothers. Lincoln knew it. Six weeks afterwards
came an intimate of Lincoln’s, one of his trusted confidants. He had
a private interview with the President and took a letter from him.
[Read the letter.] Mr. Blair said he was no messenger from Mr.
Lincoln, and as he said that, he (Benjamin) could draw no other
conclusion than that he was his messenger, as he took great pains to
reiterate it several times. [Laughter.] The transaction on the part
of the president was carried on on the basis of two countries; on
the part of Lincoln on the basis of one and a common country. When
Blair came here there was a prospect of some arrangement. There was
some hope that, as if by a magic wand, the struggle could have been
stayed, and everything made to remain in its own condition. Under
this condition of things, was it strange that our president, who is
a tender-hearted man, should strive to stay the flow of blood by an
attempt to effect peace?
Confident as was the president in the theory of our vice-president,
what better could he have done than to have sent him to strive to
secure this peace? He had sent him and he has failed, and the people
knew what they could expect. Now, is it enough to make resolves, to
say that we will perish or be free? Talk can’t win battles, resolves
can’t fill treasuries, good intentions can’t feed men. Everything in
this country belongs to the confederate people or the Yankees.
Everything held here is held in trust for freedom. What should we
take from the people—take all the cotton? He would give all he had;
and he still had some left in his far southern home. What was the
scene that greeted Farragut’s eye as he rounded the crescent upon
which stands New Orleans? The lurid glare of burning cotton. Did men
stop to ask to whom it belonged? No. It sufficed that the Yankees
wanted it that they should not get it. How was it when Sherman
advanced through Georgia? The cotton on fallacious pretexts was left
to go and feed Lincoln’s treasury. With these examples, has any man
holding a bale of cotton the right of withholding it from the
country? [No. no]
[Page 163]
He asked
the same of the tobacco. He wanted more; he wanted the grain, the
bacon, and everything that the gallant men in the trenches wanted,
and he wanted it free. [Cries of take all.] Talk of your rights and
possessions. What light and possessions would your arrogant foeman
leave you? [Cries of none.]
But this was not all that he wanted. He wanted more men for the
defence of our freedom. Should any prejudice stand between the wants
of our brave soldiers in the trenches? They wanted aid, and what
consequence was it whether that aid was white or black? [Cries of,
“Put the negroes in the army.”] He then gave some figures, showing
what was the arms-bearing population of the south between eighteen
and forty-five, leaving out Kentucky and Missouri, when the war
began. He then showed the force brought out by the Yankees since
1861 to 1864, showing it to be three millions against one million
confederates struggling for freedom. Had we been touched with the
fire of prophecy, and could we have seen things as we see them now,
would we have objected to put this element in the army? [Cries of”
No; put the negroes in the army.”] He would make this proposition:
Let us say to every negro who wants to go in the army, go and be
free. But let us not impress him, as we are told that if the negro
is impressed he will fight against us. No side but the Yankee has
offered to give them freedom if they fight for them, and the Yankees
are the best bargain-driveis in the world. Whilst we should never
imitate the Yankees in anything, let us, at least, imitate them in
this. Let us encourage the bravest and best among our negroes with
the assurance of freedom, and, his word for it, the negro would
fight better for us than for the Yankee. With us they would have the
hope of securing freedom and a home; with the Yankees their freedom
is at best precarious, and they cannot live in cold northern climes.
With his early traditions concerning slavery, with all his
prejudices against using the negro for this purpose, he was willing
to give up both to meet the necessities of the hour. This policy
could not be inaugurated by the confederate government. It should be
done by the States. But which of the States would inaugurate the
measure?
If Virginia now but gives the lead in this great measure of public
safety, South Carolina, which those who know not her people tell us
falters now, will soon follow, and all the others after ! But when
will this policy be inaugurated? [Cries of “Now! now!”] Yes, now.
Let us lose no time to try that measure. Although he is no alarmist,
he would say, let us do so now, or we must make up our minds to see
the army defending the capital recede.
We had just heard from one of the speakers (Mr. Hunter) that the
skulkers and deserters would now come forth. But these, he thought,
were vain delusions. Tennessee, Arkansas. Louisiana, and Texas were
all beyond our reach as sources of re enforcements. If the broad
Mississippi was not between us he would show where re-enforcements
could come from. He would turn to Louisiana, and ask for aid from
her who had so cheerfully tendered that aid in the beginning; for
she had sent to Virginia two gallant brigades of nearly nine
thousand men, nearly all of whom were now mouldering in their graves
in the soil of Virginia.
He then read an extract from the New York Tribune of the 6th, being a
commentary on Butler’s speech, and he asked: Could the imagination
reach the depth of infamy and degradation proposed for us by the
plan of placing the negroes over us as task-masters?
He next read an extract from the New York Post of November, 1864,
showing the destiny of the black race, which was to be that which
had overtaken the Indian. The negro had been protected by the south
until he had reached a population of from 700,000 in 1790 to
3,000,000 in 1864. And this is the inhumanity charged against us by
the false philanthropists of the north. The only hope of the negro
race was, therefore, with us of the south. The north asserted that
the progress of the white race would be the decline of the negro
race; and by decline they meant that the blacks must perish to make
way for the whites. The destiny that awaits them, therefore, on the
success of the north is annihilation; with us, it s comfort, plenty,
and the security of their existence.
There was another thing he wanted, and that was to have the croakers
hanged. Turn them over to the soldiers and let them execute judgment
upon them. He wished that every one who was circulating sensation
reports should be treated in this manner. These men who had enjoyed
the ease and plenty of the home circle, who had never spent one
night out of their warm bed, and never lost a meal, were croaking
while the soldiers were passing resolution upon resolution to carry
on the war to the bitter end to whip the Yankees, and when they got
through with them they would turn round and whip the croakers. He
then read extracts of the resolutions adopted by various
regiments.
He concluded by saying that we were to have a bitter struggle
throughout the year. Let every one nerve himself for the conflict.
If we can but pluck from the heart-strings of the people the love of
money, we are free.
