ORATION. 33 tide of battle, and to prepare for the capture of Burgoyne. What then must be the result of these repeated horrors, not condemned, but justified and applauded by the Southern press, — accepted as part of their system of warfare? The slaughter and the starvation of prisoners are not the weapons of a cause to which victory has been decreed. When Grant thunders against the walls of Richmond, his batteries will have a strength not shown by the army returns. Great wrongs, cruel agonies,’ gigantic offences will add force to his artillery. Remember, this is not a solitary instance of Rebel cruelty. At Milliken’s Bend, prisoners of war, taken in arms for their country, guilty of no crime, except the color of their skin, were literally crucified upon the trees of the forest. Ah, it needed not this crime to remind us that the strongest bond which links together all nations and races of men is the- recollection that the same great sacrifice was once offered for all. From those haunted forests, from the blood-stained enclosure of Fort Pillow, from the dungeons, where prisoners of war have been starved into imbecility or death, from a hundred plantations where a little pile of ashes has been the only memorial of a foul murder, there has gone an army of martyrs, who stand before the throne, and cry, “How long, O Lord, how long?” Men talk of retaliation. When the record of these 5
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