Holmes County farmer. [volume] (Millersburg, Ohio) 1857-1926, 1861-12-05
How the Country Became inZ
vOIycd isi IL civil War. II

IeOpie ale Olten thrown into hntaBO'
nistc positions without necessarily be-
coming enemies. Their desire may be
sincere and earnest to adjust and settle the
dispute that may have arisen without
resort to adverse and hostile proceedings,
while yet they may be compelled to take
part in such procecdi"gs.
Members Of churches, Of societies and
corporations, and private individuals, are
often drawn into, and become parties to
controversies which they would gladly
have avoided, and which, had their coun
sells lecn listened to, would never have
taken place. Take familiar instance.
A dispute arises among heirs or other
claimants as to the distribution of prop
erty. A portion, perhaps majority, OF
the claimants on each side are anxious to
settle the controversy without resoitingto
the expense, delay and uncertainties of
litigation, aud propose terms of compro-
mise and adjustment. But there happens
to be persons on one side or both, who are
self wiled, and obstinately persist in
determination to have all they claim or
nothing, They are impracticable; they
know they are in the right, and the right
they will have, though it may cost more
than their claim is worth to obtain it, or
even to contend for it. The consequence
is that those who would and could have
settled amicably are involved along with
the rest in an expensive and protracted
lawsuit. The reader can hardly avoid
applying this example to the civil war
now raging in the United States Had
the wishes of large portion, prohaly
ma jority, Of the people, both North and
South been consulted, this terrible ma
tionul calamity would have been averted.
All terms of compromise an settlement
of the disputes which had arisen, were re-
jected by those on each side who had been
legally invested with, or had illegally as
sumed the control Of public affairs. The
consequence is, that those on both sides
who would and could, had their wishes
been regarded and their warnings hooded,
have prevented the resort to the sword, are
forced along with those whose obstinacy
was the immediate cause of the bloody
strife, into a desperate struggle for laying
waste each others homes and cutting each
others hroats
North and South, the mass of the peo-
pie who remain at home, and the mass Of
those who go in the field and engage in
actual battle, bear no malice against each
other. They are driven by force of cir
cumstances and by ali pparent necessity
to take position of deadly hostility to
each other. This can only be ended, as
it might have been prevented at the out
set, by coming to II mutual understanding
AS there is no tribunal to which the par
ties can appeal, and whose decision shall
be final, this mutual understanding must
be and will be arrived at some day, in or
der to prevent the horrors of an interm-
nable intestine war.
The sooner this understanding is arrived
at, the better for the whole country. All
that is wanting is for the mass OF the pco,
pie in the two sections now apparently
hostile to each other, to see the coutrover-
sy in its true light. When the people Of
the South come to understand that this
war is, on the part of the Federal Gov
ernment, merely an effort to assert the
authority of the Constitution aud main
tain the Union aS it existed from the be-
ginning, and when the people at the North
shall be convinced and act upon that con
viction, that the mass of the Southern
people desire nothing IN ore than the pro-
lection of their rights under the Federal
Constitution and the laws of lheirrespect-
i've Safes, we may look for return to the
old concord and harmony Of former days.
- Statesman.