Mineral Point weekly tribune. (Mineral Point, Wis.) 1859-1868, 1861-06-18
SECESSION AND PEACE.

ourselves that the North, at least, was
unit entire and without exception, on the
vital issue thus forced upon the country.
We were mistaken, however, as every
days indications for some time past ATTIC s.
In contemplating the holy cause of liberty
and constitutional government as menanc-
ed by organized treason we were too will
linz to forget, that Providence had made
some knaves as well as many good men,
and that in the general distribution of
ard share These species of humanity are
doubtless designed for some use, though
we are puzzled to understand it, unless it
be that they are made to worry the good
while cultivating virtue and patience
which just now they are busily doing
Day after day they talk and scribble about
the causes of our political troubles, and
suggest remedies in a style and manner
offensive to patriotism, disgusting to com
mon sense and regardless of truth. These
gentry, who, fortunately for the good of
Mankind, are as diminutiye in numbers as
they are In principle, make the party that
elected President Lincoln the scape-goat
of our national calam ties, assail the poll
CIV of his administration because it is not
of their choice, oppose an armed resist
ance to armed traitors as impOlitic, and
because it costs blood and treasure, and
finally insist that our troubles can and
ought to be settled in peace and amity.-
We neither expect nor care to convert
these men to our views. They are the
same at all times and everywhere-dull
and obstinate. They abhor the surgeons
knife because it hurts and draws blood,
but if the patient dies, simply because
they would not let his physician remove
the injury, then they make the welkin ring
with their sickly winnings over his dead
body. Like the craven hearted men of
Patrick IIenry's time, whose worthy pro
geny they are, they cry peace, when there
is no peace, and like them they ould, if
they could, barter away the birthricht Of
| brave and liberty-loving people for the
feshpots of Egypt.
1t is, therefore, for other reasons and
purposes, that we undertake to enquire
into the cause or causes underlying Seccs-
sion, and to show what policy ought to be
pursued towards it
| Secession is not Of the present, nor was
it engendered by the organization of the
Republican party or the tendency of their
principles Secession is of thirty years
standing, and though the history of its
past is less bloody than that of the pres
ent, it has already CLAIMED the dead as it
will surely damn the living John C. Cal
houn, whose memory deserves execration
as that Of a second Arnold, was the author
of the doctrine of Secession, and with him
it originated in an unholy lust for power,
the pruriency Of which increased as the
chances for its qualification lcssened-I
Then, as now, the State of South Carolina
was the field for its first practical enforce
ment; but at that time it was in its incipi-
ent stages, was called notification,
and confined itself to "nullify'' the reve-
nue. laws of the United States laws
clearly Constitutional, not of a section
al character nor passed by sectional
party. Gen. jackson suppressed it, it is
true, but he did not and probably could
not eradicate its seed, fer in 1852 it again !
came to bloom, in the shape of an ordi /
nance adopted by a convention called by /
the LEGISLATURE of that same State of
South Carolina, in which she declared it
to be her right, in the exercise of her
sovereign will to secede from the Federal
Union whenever she should think proper
OF course neither the Republican party
nor personal liberty bills prompted that
state TO this second act Of shame, for ne:-
Their existed There was moreover. pro
found peace on the subject Of the pecu-
liar Institution, and to remove the slightest
pretext for complaint on that score. Con
greSs had, on y two years since, passed q
fugitive slave law, so stringent and mex
orable in It's provisions as to satisfy the
most rabid pro-slSvery man. If we con-
meet the past of secession with present
events, none can fail to see that it has
grown and become bold by degrees AT
tirmed and enforced as it always has been
without cause or pretext whatever seces-
sion has from its inception unwittinglv
unmasked itself not as means to redress
grievances that could not be redressed in