The Sun.
London, England, 1866-09-01 00:00:00

HIE SUN, LONDON, SATURDAY EVENING, SEPTEMBER 1, 1866.

where all the ordinary modes and methods of organised

industry have been broken up, and the bonds and influences
that guarantee social order have been destroyed—whore

,housands and tens of thousands of turbulent spirits have

been suddenly loosed from the discipline of war, and thrown
without resources or restraint upon a disorganised and

chaotic society, and where the keen sense of defeat is added
to the overthrow of ambition and hope, scenes of violence
should defy for a time the imperfect discipline of law, and
excite anew the fears and forebodings of the patriotic and
well-disposed. It is unquestionably true that local dis-
turbances of this kind, accompanied by more or less of vio-
lehce, do still occur. But they are confined entirely to the
cities and larger towns of the Southern States, where
different races and interests are brought most closely in
contact, and where passions and resentments are always
most easily fed and fanned into outbreak; and even there
they are quite as much the fruit of untimely and hurtful
political agitation as of any hostility on the part of the •
people to the authority of the national Government.
But the concurrent testimony of those best acquainted
with the condition of society and the state of public senti-
ment in the South—including that of its representatives in
this Convention—establishes the fact that the great mass
of the Southern people accept, with as full and sincere sub-
mission as do the people of the other States, the re-esta-
blished supremacy of the national authority, and are pre-
pared, in the most loyal spirit, and with a zeal quickened
alike by their interest and their pride, to co-operate with
other States and sections in whatever may be necessary to
defend the rights, maintain the honour, and promote the
welfare of our common country. History affords no in-
stance where a people, so powerful in numbers, in resources,
and in public spirit, after a war so long in duration, so de-
structive in its progress, and so adverse in its issue, have
accepted defeat and its consequences with so much of good
faith as has marked the conduct of the people lately in in-
surrection against the United States. Beyond all question
this has been largely due tothe wise generosity with which
their enforced surrender was accepted by the President of
the United States and the generals in immediate command
of their armies, and to the liberal measures which were
afterwards taken to restore order, tranquillity, and, law to
the States where all had for the time been overthrown.
No steps could have been better calculated tocommand the
respect, win the confidence, revive the patriotism, and
secure the permanent and affectionate allegiance of the
people of the South to the Constitution and laws of the
Union than those which have been so firmly taken and so
steadfastly pursued by the President of the United States.
(Great applause.)

No people has ever yet existed whose loyalty and faith
such treatment long continued would not alienate and im-
pair. And the ten millions of Americans who live in the
South would be unworthy citizens of a free country, dege-
nerate sons of an heroic ancestry, unfit ever to become
guardians of the rights and liberties bequeathed to us by
the fathers and founders of this republic, if they could ac-
cept, with uncomplaining submissiveness, the humiliations
thus sought to be imposed upon them. Resentment of in-
justice is always and everywhere essential to freedom ;
and the spirit which prompts the States and people lately
in insurrection, but insurgent now no longer, to protest
against the imposition of unjust and degrading conditions,
makes them all the more worthy to share in the Govern-
ment of a free commonwealth, and gives still firmer assur-
ance of the future power and freedom of the republic.
(Immense applause.)
[This demonstration of applause induced the Hon.
Reverdy Johnson to move a request that Mr. Raymond
read the foregoing paragraph a second time.]
For whatever responsibility the Southern people may.
have incurred in resisting the authority of the national
Government and in taking up arms for its overthrow, they
may be held to answer, as individuals, before the judicial
tribunals of the land, and for that conduct, as societies and
organised communities, they have already paid the most
fearful penalties that can fall on offending States in the
losses, the sufferings, and humiliations of unsuccessful war.
But whatever may be the guilt or the punishment4f the
conscious authors of the insurrection, candour and common
justice demand the concession that the great mass of those
who became involved in its responsibility acted upon what
they believed to be their duty, in defencd of what they had
been taught to believe their rights, or under a compulsion
physical and moral, which they were powerless to resist.
Nor can it be amiss to remember that, terrible as have
been the bereavements and losses of this war, they have
fallen exclusively upon neither section and upon neither
party—that they have fallen, indeed, with greater weight
upon those with whom the war began; that in the death
of relatives and friends, the dispersion of families, the dis-
ruption of social systems and social ties, the overthrow of
Governments, of law and of order, the destruction of pro-
perty, and Of forms and modes and means of industry, the
loss of political, commercial, and moral influence, in every
shape and form which great calamities can assume, the
States and people which engaged in the war against the
Government of the United States have suffered tenfold
more than those who remained in allegiance to its Consti-
tution and laws.

These considerations may not, as they certainly do not,

justify the action of the people of the insurgent States ;
but no just or generous mind will refuse to them very
considerable weight in determining the line of conduct
which the Government of the United States should pm sue
towards them,

They accept, if not with alacrity, certainly without

sullen resentment, the defeat and overthrow they have
sustained. They acknowledge and acquiesce in the results
to themselves and the country which that defeat involves.
They avow their willingness to share the burdens and
discharge all the duties and obligations which rest upon
them, in common with other States and other sections of

the Union ; and they renew, through their representatives
in this Convention, by all their public conduct, in every
way, and by the most solemn acts by which States and
Societies can pledge their faith, their engagement to bear
true faith and allegiance, through all time to come, to the
Constitution of the United States, and to all laws that may
be made in pursuance thereof.
Fellow-countrymen ! We call upon yon, in full reliance
upon your intelligence and your patriotism, to accept, with
generous and ungrudging confidence, this full surrender
on the part of those lately in arms against your authority,
and to share with them the honour and renown that await
those who bring back peace and concord to jarring States.
The war just closed, with all its sorrows and disasters,
has opened a new career of glory to the nation it has
saved. It has proved to us beyond controversy or doubt,
by the course pursued towards both contending sections by
foreign Powers, that we must be the guardians of our own
independence, and that the principles of republican free-
dom we represent can find among the nations of the earth
no friends or defenders but ourselves.

We call upon you, therefore, by every consideration of
your own dignity and safety, and in the name of liberty
throughout the world, to complete the work of restoration and
peace which the President of the United States has so well
begun, and which the policy adopted and the principles
asserted by the present Congress alone obstruct. The
time is close at hand when members of a new Congress
are to be elected. If that Congress shall perpetuate this
policy, and, by excluding loyal States and people from re-

presentation in its halls, shall continue the usurpation by

which the legislative powers of the Government are now
exercised, common prudence compels us to anticipate aug-
mented discontent, a sullen withdrawal from the duties
and obligations of the Federal Government, internal dis-
sension and a general collision of sentiments and preten-
sions which may renew, in a still more fearful shape, the
civil war from which we have just emerged. We call
upon you to interpose your power to prevent the re-
currence of so transcendent a calamity. We call upon
you in every Congressional district of every State to secure
the election of members who, whatever other differences
may characterise their political action, and unite in recog-
nising the right of every State of the Union to represen-
tation in Congress, and who will admit to seats in either
branch every loyal representative from every State in
allegiance to the Government, who may be found by each
House, in the exercise of the power conferred upon it by
the Constitution, to have been duly elected, returned, and
qualified for a seat therein.

When this shall have been done the Government will
have been restored to its integrity, the Constitution of the
United States will have been re-established in its full
supremacy, and the American Union will have again be-
come what it was designed to be by those who formed it,
a sovereign nation, composed of separate States, each like
itself, moving in a distinct and independent sphere, exer-
cising powers defined and zeserved by a common Consti-
tution, and resting ipon the assent, the confidence, and
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yd emand.
The
several Committees appointed by the Chair were
and
Com-
m fort t e
New the members
then announced. Of the UnionNaisitieolnvajlersey; n ExecutJohnive Com-
mittee,
York
oTr
k. Crowell,
are,
Robert
of
H Orwyn andh
Tilden. For New Jersey—John T. Crowell and Treel o J.
. F.
Randall.
The following compose the Resident Executive Com-
mittee at Washington : —Hon. Montgomery Blair of Mary-
land ; lion. Charles Mason, of lowa ; Ward B. Lamon, of
the District of Columbia ; John F. Coyle, of the District
of Columbia; A. E. Perry, of the District of Columbia;
Samuel Fowler, of the District of Columbia; Cornelius'
Wendell, of the District of Columbia ; Colonel James It.
O'Beirne, of the District of Columbia.
lion. iteverdy Johnson was appointed by the Committee
to wait on the President.
After some further proceedings of an unimportant
nature, the President of the Convention then said:—
Gentlemen of this Convention,—For the kindness and
courtesy by which you have sustained the chair in the
efforts to which, by your resolution, you have been
pleased to allude, I return you my most sincere thanks.
Before putting that motion which shall terminate the _
pro-
ceedings of this Convention, I shall ask you once more
to- join in prayer with the Rev. Mr. Elliott, invoking
the beziediction of Almighty God, by whose support we
are sure of success, but without which we should inevi-
tably fall.
The Rev. Mr. Elliott thereupon made an eloquent
prayer.
The Chair then, at half-past twelve o'clock, put the
question,7: and announced that the Convention stood ad-
journed elm die.

RAILWAY INTELLIGENCE.