Daily Ohio statesman. [volume] (Columbus, Ohio) 1855-1870, 1861-10-10
Dividing the Loyal sentiment OF the
20 County.


Great professions are made in certain guar
ters Of an Intense desire that there should b
an entire unanimity of sentiment and actor
among all loyal citizens, in the present struggle
for the maintenance Of the Constitution an(
the Union, 4tt WI
There is but one question that Is likely e
seriously divide professed Union men OF thi'
time, and that is, the question Of slave emanci
patton as the policy of the Federal Government
under the plea of Its necessity for putting dowr
the rebellion.
II Is impossible to unite the loyal people oil the
North, and still more impracticable to consoli
date the Union menot the South, in favor ol
such policy. All efforts tending in that direc
tion would prove abortve, and serve no other
purpose than to distract and divide the North,
and ALLEVIATE from II the loyalists in the South
thus jeopardislng, If not rendering hopeless, the
reunion of the States.
The fercest political agitations in this coun
try in times of peace have grown out of the
slavery question. Now, when civil war is up
on US, when the blood and passions Of men run
high, when IL Is 80 easy to excite feelings oi
sectional enmity and revenge. and when no one
can foresee to what excesses men may be led
under the influence Of blind and unreasoning
fanaticism, it becomes all good men and true
patriots TO set their faces as flint against eve
ry effort to revive the fierce political warfare
on the slavery question, to weaken the Admin
istration and produce that state Of things at the
North which, it is urged, the rebel leaders have
counted upon from the beginning division in
Northern sentiment as to the objects and pur-
poses of the war.
1t ought to be sufficient inducement to the
most ardent anti-slavery philanthrOpst to re-
frain from agitating politically the question OF
slave emancipation at this time, that 1t can be
of no possible benefit to the cause he advocates.
Even proclamation of emancipation by the
President would, under present circumstances,
be mere Mutum fulmen, tending, instead Of
freeing the slaves, merely to exasperate the
rebels and ALLEVIATE Southern Union men.
The folly of pressing the emancipation policy
upon the Government at this time is well set
forth in the following piquant paragraph, which
we copy from the Chicago Times:
You must catch your hare before you eat
him, and you must get into the slave States be-
fore you free the negroes. We have heard of
an old woman who was sorely puzzled In o sud
len emergency how to save two babies and
oand-box at the same time. She finally clung |
% the children, and exclaimed that, "if God
lad only thought to give her three arms, she
might have saved the band-box." Those who
,lamor for slave emancipation wish to put the
country in the position of the old woman. We
nave both arms full already-as much as we
can do to protect our own borders. How are
We even TO send proclamation OF freedom to
slaves into the rebel States, much less TO confer
Il upon them The truth is, we are rapidly
drifting into an utterly impractcable issue
just as we did in regard to slavery in the Terri
tories. We are trying to eat the hare before
We have caught 1t, discussing the propriety Of
freeing the negroes Of rebels when we have not
possession OF a single rebel State of the Union.
A greater farce was never presented to the
world. ..t--.l