Unconsumed By The Divine Vengeance

This entry is from Southern Literary Messenger, September 1861, "Letter to the Rev. Dr. Tying of New York" written "by author of 'Black Diamond'", which is none other than Edward A. Pollard, who was a journalist and a one of the editors of The Richmond Examiner, and an outspoken secessionist.

. . .I will endeavor to write calmly ; but I will not be satisfied to write less than truthfully.


Some days ago, sir, in making a hasty journey into the North, in which I was enabled to observe mutely, but narrowly, the sentiments and the signs of that sections, there was put into my hands a New York paper of your own persuasion, containing a report of a Sunday sermon, delivered by you before the Bible Society, on the occasion of the presentation of Bibles to the troops enlisted for war upon the South.  I will not foul my sheet with the name of this paper; and I deem it equally unnecessary, sir to assoil [sic] it by the extended report of your extraordinary vile remarks on this sabbattical [sic] occasion.


You were not satisfied to name my countrymen, and your "brethren" (to use the fondling term of the old poisoning hypocrisy of the North,) as "pirates;" you condemned them to a fate, at which demons only could rejoice ; you consigned them to nameless horrors, and declared your belief that "the Bible would singe and scald their polluted hands!"  There were Northern troops standing around you in the clamor and passion for blood.  They cheered you, sir.  You replied that "they were worthy of the Bible:"  in the animation that their shouts inspired, you exclaimed, "how their names will glisten in glory!"  You boasted of your own prowess in the work of death.  You declared in the bloody bravery and dialect of a murderer, that, as to the rebellious Southerners, "you would shoot them down as mad dogs!". . . .

. . . Great God, sir, is it possible that such awful, mocking, flippant, demon blasphemy should be uttered in the name of His church, and of His blessed Son, who "taketh away the sins of the world," and the utterer live on unconsumed by the Divine vengeance!. . . .

Father Thomas H. Mooney giving religious service, in front of tent,
to New York State Militia, from Library of Congress Collection