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TO THE 
 
 MEN OF THE SOUTH. 
 
 BY A TEXAN. 
 
 Men of the South : 
 
 During your passage from where you were captured 
 to this your place of captivity, you have travelled 
 through a prosperous and flourishing country ; this is 
 a fact which even your limited means of observation, 
 guarded as you were on all sides, must have shown to 
 you. 
 
 In the large and populous cities you have seen no 
 signs of war or want ; business was going on with great 
 activity ; as you passed through the streets you hardly 
 attracted attention, except from a small crowd of boys 
 and children, or the few idlers who are always ready to 
 stare at anything to which they have not been long 
 accustomed ; the rest of the community, busy with their 
 own affairs, would perhaps pause for a moment to look, 
 sorry for the poor devils, and thinking at the same time, 
 how glad you must be, to have been rescued from your 
 military tyrants, and on your way to where you have 
 since fared better and been treated with greater kindness 
 than you ever were as soldiers of the South. 
 
 The country too, far away from towns and cities, was 
 in the same prosperous condition. You saw there no 
 " old field " deserted on account of its barrenness : no 
 large tracts of fertile land, covered with forest, uncleared 
 and uncultivated : no broken-down cabins without doors 
 on their hinges or glass in their windows, for, on the 
 contrary, every cultivable acre was bright and blooming 
 with useful crops. Every man, woman and child there, 
 

 
 enjoy, in their season, fruits and vegetables, which to you 
 have been unknown or even unheard of. While you 
 have been barely existing on your hard fare of beans 
 and beef or bacon, they have been revelling in all sorts 
 of luxuries which to them are not luxuries, but the 
 common things of life, so long have they been used to 
 them. Their houses are all large and comfortable. 
 They all read and write. They are able to get news- 
 papers and books of many kinds, from which they learn 
 of all that is going on in the great world around them. 
 Any one of them, by his own exertions, is able to reach 
 high position, or at least to gain the respect of those 
 about him and to give his children the advantages of an 
 education, by the means of which they in their turn can 
 rise and prosper. 
 
 You have seen all these things with your own eyes, 
 and having seen must believe them. You have probably 
 thought of them often and have wondered why you too 
 and your fellow countrymen around you have not en- 
 joyed these same comforts and privileges. 
 
 It is now time for you to learn that they have 
 been kept from you unjustly. 
 
 The wealthy and influential property-holders among 
 you have known all these things and have used their 
 power to deprive you of your liberties, so long, that 
 perhaps, you have ceased to wish to improve your con- 
 dition or that of your children, who are to come after 
 you. 
 
 Not satisfied with this, they have dragged you into A 
 "War against your Country, which, had it been suc- 
 cessful, would only have made your lot the more pitia- 
 ble ; there would then have been no hope for you, you 
 would have been put down lower and lower without any 
 prospect of rising even to respectability. 
 
 Their ambition has become their own destruction. 
 
But with their fall comes your deliverance. 
 
 Their resources are nearly exhausted: Their armies 
 are captured, defeated or driven back at all points : 
 Their fortified places are one by one wrested from them, 
 in spite of all they can do to prevent it : They have lost 
 the control of the Mississippi EivePv, by the fall of 
 Vicksburg and Port Hudson: They have been driven 
 out of Maryland, "Western Virginia, Kentucky, Tennes- 
 see, Missouri, Louisiana and Florida : Everywhere they 
 look with terror and despair on the advancing forces of 
 the Country they were once proud to call their own. 
 
 Their end is at hand. In a few short months their 
 power and their pride, will have been crushed and sub- 
 dued. The Flas; of the Union will once more wave 
 over its territory, recovered by the irresistible power of 
 right. The whole country will be under one Govern- 
 ment, which will give equal rights to every man. You 
 will be free at last to return to your families, with the 
 feeling that you are indeed your own masters and no 
 longer liable to be looked down upon by the servants of 
 those who have kept themselves so high above you, but 
 who are in reality no more than men like yourselves. 
 
 You. have heretofore been called " poor white trash," 
 the " mudsills of society " by the very set of men for 
 whom you have suffered and are still suffering so much. 
 You have every reason to believe that had they suc- 
 ceeded in their base designs on the Unity of the Kepiiblic, 
 these, and other more opprobrious names would have 
 been yours. The insolence of your haughty and would- 
 be aristocratic masters, far from being abated by their 
 success, would have increased inordinately. If they 
 condescended to notice you, it would be because you 
 were needed to fill the large standing armies absolutely 
 necessary to keep their territory from invasion, and thus 
 it would happen that the boasted liberty for which you 
 
have been struggling would really resolve itself into 
 this: that you would be forced to endure heat and 
 cold, hunger and thirst, insufficient protection from the 
 weather, wounds and even death, really, in order that 
 the blacks, the " inferior race," may remain quietly at 
 home enjoying comfort and security — the result of your 
 toils. 
 
 It is hard to understand why you have attacked a 
 Government which has always been the poor man's best 
 friend ; it has, and will secure to you all your rights ; 
 under its protection, with little effort on your part, you 
 will be rich in every blessing a freeman could desire ; 
 what you accumulated by honest exertion would be 
 your own, and nobody would dare to deprive you of it. 
 
 But you have not done this of your own free will, 
 you have been forced to it by fear of imprisonment and 
 death, the punishment of all in the power of your self- 
 constituted leaders who dared to resist their authority. 
 
 Eejoice, therefore, that you are once more under the 
 shelter of your Old Flag. You can now return to your 
 former allegiance, without fear ; do so, and by simply 
 waiting you will see your oppressors overthrown and 
 yourselves able to go where and do what you will ; you 
 can then again taste the sweets of domestic life. 
 
 Men of the South, take these truths to your hearts and 
 think of them ; think of this too, that you have still the 
 privilege of aiding to regain your lost freedom, and that 
 by doing so you will give a lustre to your memories in 
 time to come. Your descendants will point with pride 
 to the name of their ancestor, for 
 
 "He helped to save his Country." 
 
 TEXAN". 
 Philadelphia, July flQth, 1863. 
 
 I 
 
 *>W60 
 

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