"I wish you to distinguish between a spirit of reprisal, in what I do,
and that of retaliation, which actuates your present violence. What
our enemies had robbed us of, as far as they can restore, I take again.
Their bread shall feed our famishing country; their wool clothe its
nakedness. But blood for blood, unless the murderer could be made to
bleed, is a doctrine abhorrent to God and to humanity. What justice is
there in destroying the habitations and lives of a set of harmless
people, because the like cruelty has been committed by a lawless army
of their countrymen, upon our unoffending brethren? Your hearts may
make the answer. But if they are hardened against the pleadings of
humanity, let prudence show your interest in leaving those men alive,
and with their means unimpaired, who will produce other harvests, if
need be, to fill our scantier granaries.
"Thus I reason with you, and I hope many are convinced; but they who
are insensible to argument must fear authority, and I declare that
every man who inflicts injury on the houses, or on the persons of the
quietest peasantry of this land, shall be punished as a traitor to the
state.
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