The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862, page 169 by Various Authors
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n Christian injunctions and natural feelings.
'Yet, as a matter of necessity, we would encourage the shooting of pickets. We of the South are accustomed to the use of arms, are individually brave and self-reliant, can creep upon their pickets and shoot them in the night, and thus carry out our defensive policy of exhausting in detail the superior numbers of the invading North. We must be conquered and subjugated unless we take advantage of all our peculiarities of habits, customs, localities, and institutions. We have to make a choice of evils; either shoot pickets, or by neglecting to do so, cut off one of our most available arms of defense. We must fight the 'devil with fire.' Our enemy professes no allegiance to the laws of morality nor to the laws of God. We must deal with them as Moses dealt with the people of Canaan, so long as they invade our territory. But we are not God's chosen people, not his instruments to punish Canaanites, and we will not follow them when they retreat to their barren Northern homes. There a just and avenging God is already punishing them for their crimes. Left to themselves, and our real enemies--those of the North-east--will perish, for they have little means of support at home, and have not learned to avail themselves of those means, trusting that a generous and confiding South would continue to feed and clothe them.
'In old countries, where there are few trees, forests, or other hiding-places, and where the country people are unused to firearms, an invaded country gains little by shooting pickets; but in a new, rough country like ours, where pickets can be approached furtively, and where all the country people are first-rate marksmen, there is no better means of harassing and exhausting an invading army than by cutting off its outposts in detail.
'It is the obvious interest of the North to make the persons of pickets sacred; and equally our obvious policy to shoot them down at every opportunity.'
In the midst of these slightly confused argumen