OPERATIONS IN KENTUCKY AND TENNESSEE. [CHAP.XII.

RICHMOND, VA., July 13,1861.

WILLIAM T. WITHERS, Clarksville, Tenn.:

No more companies can be received.

L.P. WALKER.

GENERAL ORDERS, } HEADQUARTERS DEPARTMENT NO.2, No.1. Memphis, Tenn., July 13,1861.

Having been assigned to the charge of the defense of that part of the valley of the Mississippi which is embraced within the boundaries of Department No.2, I hereby assume command. All officers on duty within the limits of said department will report accordingly. In assuming this very grave responsibility, the general in command is constrained to declare his deep and long-settled conviction that the war in which we are engaged is one not warranted by reason or any necessity, political or social, of our existing condition, but that it is indefensible and of unparalleled atrocity. We have protested, and do protest, that all we desire is to be let alone, to repose in quietness under our own vine and under our own fig tree. We have sought and only seek the undisturbed enjoyment of the inherent and indefeasible right of self-government, a right which freemen can never relinquish, and which none but tyrants could ever seek to wrest from us. Those with whom we have been lately associated in the bonds of a pretended fraternal regard have wished and endeavored to deprive us of this, our great birthright as American freemen. Nor is this all. They have sought to deprive us of this inestimable right by a merciless war, which can attain no other possible end that the ruin of fortunes and the destruction of lives; for the subjugation of Christian freemen is out of the question. A war which has thus no motive except lust or haste, and no object except ruin and devastation, under the shallow pretense of the restoration of the Union, is surely a war against heaven, as well as a war against earth. Of all the absurdities ever enacted, of all the hypocrisies ever practiced, an attempt to restore a union of minds, hearts, and wills like that which once existed in North America, by the ravages of fire and sword, are assuredly among the most prodigious. As sure as there is a righteous Ruler of the universe, such a war must end in disaster to those by whom it was inaugurated, and by whom it is now prosecuted with the circumstances of barbarity which, it was fondly believed, would never more disgrace the annals of a civilized people.

Numbers may be against us, but the battle is not always to the strong. Justice will triumph; and an earnest of this triumph is already beheld in the mighty uprising of the whole Southern heart. Almost as one man this great section comes to the rescue, resolved to perish rather than yield to the oppressor, who, in the name of freedom, yet under the prime inspiration of an infidel horde, seeks to reduce eight millions of freemen to abject bondage and subjugation. All ages and conditions are united in one grand and holy purpose of rolling back the desolating tide of invasion, and right of self-government to which they are by nature and nature's God as justly entitled as those who seek thus ruthlessly to enslave them.

The general in command, having the strongest confidence in the intelligence and firmness of purpose of those belonging to his department, enjoins upon them the maintenance of a calm, patient, persistent, and undaunted determination to resist the invasion at all hazards and to the