An Appeal to the Federal Soldiers

Written by "A New Englander, Now A Confederate Soldier." Dated from first line: "Two years of our sanguinary conflict..." Says he is going to lay aside "weapons of strife" and reason together on the lessons the war can teach. Says it was ill-will and sectional prejudice that led to the South's secession. Claims "Slavery was the apparent, though not the real cause of the war. That real cause lay in the diveristy of our interests." Claims the differences between urban commercialism and agrarian staple production caused the war. Says "Your politicians seized upon abolitionism as a convenient pretext for exciting the popular mind against us." Goes on to discuss the Union, the Emancipation Proclamation, and rights. Says South will not be conquered. Turns the Emacipation Proclamation around saying "They [the federal government] are striving to give freedom to the slave who is not capable of enjoying it, that they may drag you, freemen, into a servitude far mare galling than African bondage." Last page makes an appeal to the Irish, Scottish, and German soldiers of the Union Army. Tells them that they have more in common with the South than the North.