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The city of New
York presented an extraordinary spectacle during the week that ended with
the 4th of July. It was full of the late rebels and their
friends, engaged in devising some method by which to persuade the country
to renounce the victory it won in the war, and to intrust the Government
to those who have done their utmost to destroy it. The Convention at
Tammany Hall represented every disloyal individual and class in the
country. Its object was to wrest the Government from the hands of those
whose patriotic fidelity has been proved in every way—from the party
which as a party accepted the challenge of war thrown down by those
represented in the Convention—from the party whose unfaltering faith and
energy forced the rebellion to unconditional surrender, saved the Union,
and vindicated the amazing power of a free popular government. Had the
Republican party doubted, and parleyed, and called for surrender, and
encouraged rebellion; had it quibbled, and derided, and delayed; had it
done exactly what the Democratic party did, the rebellion would have
triumphed, the Government and Union would have been overthrown, and the
hope of popular liberty every where in the world would have been fatally
dimmed.
If, however, when the war ended,
the rebel leaders in the Southern States and their political allies at the
North had owned frankly that they had put their cause to the test of the
sword, and having lost, honorably acquiesced in the consequences; that,
assenting to the abolition of slavery, and relieved from fear of personal
harm or of general confiscation, they acknowledged the right of the loyal
people to decide what political guarantees the changed condition of their
States required; if, in such a spirit they had united with the people of
the loyal States, old party lines would have disappeared, and the dividing
questions would have been of a true commercial and manufacturing and
agricultural policy. But such a course was not to be expected, and such
reason and generosity were too ideal. Whatever tendency there may have
been toward this condition was arrested by the conduct of the Democratic
party. Under the encouragement of its support the haughty, defiant,
impracticable, and utterly intolerable spirit of the old slave leaders at
the South awakened, and aimed to seize the political control of the late
rebel States. In its old manner it harangued the loyal people of the
country upon the Constitution, and still panting with the mad effort to
destroy it, this spirit and its disciples claimed to be its true
interpreters. Dripping with the blood shed in rebellion to perpetuate
slavery they shouted that they were the real defenders of law and the only
friends of the rights of the people. They were the Hessians of the
Revolution of ’76 undertaking to teach patriotism to the Yankee sons of
liberty.
Growing every month and every day
more insolent, these men—whom mere craft, at least, should have taught
to remain concealed—boldly threatening endless resistance to the
Government, and bloody anarchy in the Southern States, with a standing
menace of war against the Union until they have their way, come thronging
to New York to dictate terms to the Democratic Convention. They did not
propose nor profess acquiescence in the results of the war. At home John
Forsyth, one of the most malignant of the rebels, and now one of the chief
Democratic leaders in Alabama, spoke of the late rebel State governments
as "overturned by revolution, tyranny, and the sword." Rhett, of
the Charleston Mercury, wrote from New York, glorying in the rebel
military lines as "our lines," and declaring that
"Southern men" would not submit to the reconstruction proposed
by Congress. A rebel Colonel from Georgia, at a meeting in New York,
shouted that if "Northern Democrats will take care of the bayonet,
the Southern Democrats would be responsible for the result of the ballot
in November," meaning that the Ku-Klux Klan would take care of loyal
voters. Mr. Langdon, a Southern delegate to the Convention, wrote that the
"iniquitous legislation" of Congress "will be wiped out
forever." Rebel officers—one of them the hero of the Fort Pillow
massacre—were members of the Convention, and others attended as
counselors. The presence of these rebels might have been a noble spectacle
in the case we have supposed; but as a fact they were here to recover what
they had lost in the field; they were here to serve "the lost
cause" with exactly the same patriotic fidelity that sent them to
Bull Run, and doomed Union soldiers to Andersonville and Salisbury.
Does any body suppose that the
late rebels have changed their views of the nature of this Government?
Does any thing tend to show it? If Governor Brown, of Georgia, or General
Longstreet, or any conspicuous rebel, honorably confesses his honest
acquiescence in the great result, he is denounced and ridiculed not alone
by the leading "Democrats" or ex-rebels of the Southern States
but by the Northern leaders also. The only class of the population in
those States which the Northern leaders especially favor and praise is
that of the unyielding, "consistent" rebels. If, on the other
hand, any one of the late rebels accepts the situation in good faith and
heartily seeks to aid in the speediest and most satisfactory settlement of
our difficulties, then, like Governor Brown, he acts openly with the
Republican party. Are such facts of no significance? Do they not help to
show in what direction and with which party lies peace? Was there an
honest, loyal man who had given his sympathy, his prayers, his money, his
blood, his friends, his children, to maintain this Union and its
Government against the rebellion, whose heart did not beat more quickly
last week as he reflected upon the assembly of the enemies of the Union
and those who aided their rebellion, to obtain possession of its
Government and to gratify their hatred of loyal men? Was there one such
man in the city, is there one in the country, who does not solemnly
resolve that he will do all that lies in him to baffle at the polls this
party which again enters upon a Presidential campaign as it did in 1860
and in 1864 with the threat of revolution if it does not succeed? It is
the insolent old slave power contending for the Government with the loyal
people of the United States. |
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