Indiana State sentinel. (Indianapolis, Ind.) 1861-1865, 1861-02-20

mghtier nations than she have forfeited, her rank
among the great leaders, and may take ignomin-
ious place, as they have been doomed to take it,
in the struggling rear.
What once was republican Rome? Whence
but from the records of the courage and the
patriotism and the self devotion and all the stern
virtues of her earlier days, have modern nations,
struggling for liberty, derived their best inspira
tiOnl Yet how low since then, in their disunion
and isolated existence have sunk the petty States
that occupy distracted Italy, once the foremost
leader in the progress of the world
Il was during a residence in one of these States
that first realized what nation is, deprived of
those guards to freedom which inherit from
the mother country; denied trial by jury, with no
/ right of habeas corpus, its people taxed without
their consent, ruled without their Concurrence; no
property exempt for an hour from lawless seizure;
no man safe, for night, from arbitrary arrest
and indefinite Imprisonment; obedience enforced
az the bayonet's point; order coerced by hun
dred thousand well drilled soldiers.
We shrink, perhaps, Indignantly from the
thought. that may brought, even to this.
And so did one of old shrink, when the prophet
with tears predicted the evils he should bring upon
his country What, is thy servant dog that
he should do this great thing2" Little he knows
who takes the first devious step from the pleas
ant paths of wisdom and peace, whittier the devi-
Gus windings are to conduct him at last 1t is as
and Of easy descent that leads to the lowest depths
of national degradation.
But YOU find no sufficient warrant, perhaps, in
the facts which surround us, to justify these fore
bodings of evil God send that they be over
estimated, 1t would be cowardly fainthearted-
ness, if the severance of this Confederacy were,
even now, irrevocably settled, to relax single
exertion. But he is best prepared to meet an
emergency who has the most carefully scanned
its possible results. The observer who employs
a telescope to obtain enlarged view of distant
danger, thereby neither lessons its distance nor
increases its magnitude.
What, then, is the prospect around usI Six
States have already passed ordinances OF seces-
sion. If conciliatiOn does not arrest the action
of the border States, they may do likewise, and
the breach may become permanent The North
and the South may, in the future, constitute two
nations
Is that alll The door once set open, the pre-
celent once established who shall say where dis
/ integration shall stop? The free States sundered
from the slave will still, it is sometimes argued,
\ form powerful ana respected coniederacy But
what assurance have we, if mere sectional inter-
ess are to be held as valid excuse for secession.
that the North west and the Northeast will hold
together; the one manufacturing and in favor of
protective duties the other agricultural and hold
/ ing to a revenue tariff To say nothing of the
distant States of the Pacific, what certainty is
there that New York and New England will
main in the same confederacy? In the CONNER
cial metropolis of our country men already can
vass the advantages of a free port. Symptoms
begin to exhibit themselves, and may go further
than empty words, of desire to initiate the free
towns OF Northern Europe, and to seek in a SOW
ereign municipality advantages from which they
have been debarred by the restraining sovereignty
of the Union.
Ifsuch should prove to be the course of things,
what destiny awaits our discovered country?
What destiny? The hand of God alone, lifting
the dark veil, can disclose the brood of evils that
may be in store for us, mercifully concealed as
yet behind its impenetrable folds!
But in dim and faint outline, lighted by the
torch of History, we may see shadowed forth our
possible fate. The strength which is derived
from union alone. lost foreverl The power gone
to command for our citizens either security at
home or protection abroad. Rank, influence.
consideration in the eyes of the world, all madly
forfeited! The glory of our Israel Departed The
flag that, even yet, is welcomed or feared in the
ports of every civilized land become but warning
beacon of the past, the symbol of greatness dis
honored and empire overthrown. The United
States of America, for whom, but yesterday, half
a continent seemed an insufficient theater of ac-
ton, degraded to the level of petty, half-eivized
princpalities, whose obscure and chronic quarrels
History scarce deigns to record:-become the
peer of Costa Rica or Nicaragua, of Venezuela or
Ecuador.
The worst vet remains untold. Power and
station forfeited, will even peaceful obscurity re-
main?
There is an evil, besides which, if we are to
Judge of causes BY effects, all other human evils
sink into insignifcance; giant evil that has
stalked abroad over the earth ever since man was
its inhabitant; an evil, the terrible details OF
which fill up more than one half of every human
/, history. Its victims are numbered, not by thou
sands, not by millions, by hundreds or thousands
of millions. No man can reckon them. No hu-
man imagination can reach the aggregate OF
the calamities it has inflicted on mankind cities,
/ villages, hamlets, given up to the flames; fields
ofthe dead and the dying, whole countries so ut
terly desolated, that the authors of their ruin
might have adopted the Huns fearful boast, that
] 1.-The grass never grew where his horse once
trOd Honest industry instructive science, liberal
arts, languish before it. All dreful passions fol
low in its wake. Ifthere be one evil, one crime
above all others, that has closed mans ears to
reason and mans heart to the love of his kind
one that has been the foe of freedom;one that ha:
r been the deadly enemy Of human rights,--thai
+ evil, that crime is WAR. And this-fhe evil OF
: evils-may be standing, even now while speak
e laundering at the gate.
North as well as South, we see already th,
i nucleus of standing armies. If these be main
y tanned and kept busy, how will it end? Wha
I follows surely as the setting sun follows tn,
rising, in the train of standing armies numerou;
and actively employed. The ascendancy offorc'
e over reason, arbitrary sway over liberty, fam
!. and popularity and power to successful war-ead
e ers and at last, it may be, what Bourbon-gov
# erned Naples was cursed with-a Military Des
q potsm.
J, And all these hdeous evils, crowned by thi
: appalling catastrophe we are about to risk why
; for what?
e The party which succeeded at the last Presiden
J. tial election rested their chief claims to pub
I, favor ON their disapprova in principle ola form
e of labor, involving African servitude, which pre-
n walls, by law, in fifteen of these United States
5 Yet that party does not propose get rid of thi
}; form of labor. 1t does not even propose to dmn
S ish the number of slaves. Its ablest leaders de
clare that they would not if in their power
d so alter the Constitution as TO abolish inyountar
1t serytude in the States where it now prevail:
e Nor, last May, at Chicago, was there any decara
r, ton, in terms, of their intention to c0nfne tha
% servtude within its present limits by refusing ad
a, mission to any new States, the inhabitants @
e which might consttutionaly adopt this form O
it labor or otherwise; though it is, probably fai
IN inference that such is the desire of considerable
" portion of that party.
W On the other hand no Southern State has prC
posed. though party in some of them may wisl
by reopenng the slave trade, to increase the nun
ID Der of African slaves by immigration.
Of Whatever. therefore, may be the private dt
le sires on either side, the practical question
s. difference, as ayowed, is narrowed down to
Y, very small matter. Let us observe that it in
wolves no proposition whatever for the ncreas
er of slavery. Ii involves no proposal to reluce
r servitude, here or elsewhere, one human bein
fe who is now freeman. The question at issu
IL amounts to this, and no more; whether the foT
Oy million Africans now held to labor within n ce
C. tain of territory shall with their descendant
dE and their owners, be restricted to their region
an shall be permitted also to occupy, If their owner
sh see fit to occupy. other more Western portions
nd this continent
rst Is this is question of humanity to the negr'
n or OF advantage to the white? | know of 4
: good reason for supposing that slaves in Fe'
IL eral Territory, will be treated or more vi
ck happy than slaves in a Federal State / know
he no sufficient reason for the belief that the numb
o. of Africans viii augment, by natural increas
en- more rapidly, if diifused through sixteen
We eighteen States than if confined to fifteen; it
e certain that within the limits of the prese