stances, the teeth were
torn from the skeleton mouths of the dead for the gold plugs, or gold
plates that might be found there. Nor was this heathenish rapacity
confined to the common soldier; the commanders and subalterns
participated with acquisitive eagerness, sharing fully with their
commands the hellish instincts of their race.

They professed to come to liberate the slave, and they uniformly robbed
or swindled him of every valuable he might possess--even little
children were stripped of their garments, as trophies of war, to be
forwarded home for the wear of embryo Puritans, as an example for them
in future. Such are the Yankees of 1863-4, and '67. They now hold
control of the nation; but her mighty heart is sore under their
oppression. She is beginning to writhe. It will not be long, before
with a mighty effort she will burst the bonds these people have tied
about her limbs, will reassert the freedom of her children, and scourge
their oppressors with a whip of scorpions.

Such men as Talmadge, Humphries, and Wolcott are no more to be found in
New England. The animus of these men is no longer with these people.
The work of change is complete. Nothing remains of their religion but
its semblance--the fanaticism of Cotton Mather, without his
sincerity--the persecuting spirit of Cotton, without the sincerity of
his motives. Every tie that once united the descendants of the Norman
with those of the Saxon is broken. They are two in interest, two in
feeling, two in blood, and two in hatred. For a time they may dwell
together, but not in unison; for they have nothing in common but
hatred. Its fruit is discord, and the day is not distant, when these
irreconcilable elements must be ruled with a power despotic as
independent, whose will must be law unto both. It is painful to look
back fifty years and contrast the harmony then pervading every class of
every section with the discord and bitterness of hate which substitutes
it to day. Then, the national airs of "Hail Columbia" and "Yankee
Doodle" thrilled home to the heart of every American. To-day, they are
only heard in one half of the Union to be cursed and execrated. To ask
a lady to play one of these airs upon the harp or piano, from the Rio
Grande to the Potomac, would be resented as an insult. The fame of
Washington and John Hancock mingled as the united nations; but the
conduct of the sons of the Puritan fathers has stolen the respect for
them from the heart of half