air bosom by blood, and generated fatal
diseases to punish humanity for its crimes. But there fell upon the
South a calamity surpassing any recorded in the annals or traditions of
man. An article in the "North American Review," from the pen of Judge
Black, well describes this new curse, the carpet-baggers, as worse than
Attila, scourge of God. He could only destroy existing fruits, while, by
the modern invention of public credit, these caterans stole the labor of
unborn generations. Divines, moralists, orators, and poets throughout
the North commended their thefts and bade them God-speed in spoiling the
Egyptians; and the reign of these harpies is not yet over. Driven from
the outworks, they hold the citadel. The epithet of August, first
applied to the mighty Julius and to his successor Octavius, was
continued, by force of habit, to the slobbering Claudius; and so of the
Senate of the United States, which august body contained in March last
several of these freebooters. Honest men regarded them as monsters,
generated in the foul ooze of a past era, that had escaped destruction
to linger in a wholesomer age; and their speedy extinction was expected,
when another, the most hideous of the species, was admitted. This
specimen had been kept by force of bayonets for four years upon the
necks of an unwilling people, had no title to a seat in the Senate, and
was notoriously despised by every inhabitant of the State which he was
seated to misrepresent. The Senators composing the majority by which
this was done acted under solemn oaths to do the right; but the Jove of
party laughs at vows of politicians. Twelve years of triumph have not
served to abate the hate of the victors in the great war. The last
presidential canvass was but a crusade of vengeance against the South.
The favorite candidate of his party for the nomination, though in the
prime of vigor, had not been in the field, to which his eloquent appeals
sent thousands, but preferred the pleasanter occupation of making money
at home. He had converted the power of his great place, that of Speaker
of the House of Representatives, into lucre, and was exposed. By mingled
chicanery and audacity he obtained possession of his own criminating
letters, flourished them in the face of the House, and, in the Cambyses
vein, called on his people to rally and save the luster of his loyalty
from soil at the hands of rebels; and they came. From all the North
ready acclaims went up, and wome