Newbern weekly progress., 1861-06-04
THE COLLAPSE OF THE AMERICAN
UNION
IFrom the London Times, May 81

So short lived has been the destinies of the
American Union that men who saw it rise may
see it fall. Lord Lyndhurst, who is happily
spared to US was born in Boston British sub
| ject, for Massachusetts, was then one of the
United Provinces Indeed, we are still pen
sonlng the loyalsts of 1775, when the con-
| querors in that war are destroying the work
of their own hands. But the collapse and
ruin of this political edfice is in itself thing
of insignifcance when compared with the pro-
ceeding by which the thing has been brought
about Civil war, or, in other words, war of
most frghtful and barbareus kind, has been
accepted and undertaken by people among
the most enlightened and best educated in the
world.
To get to the days of "civi1 war; in Europe
we must 90 back to the dark ages of history
No parallel to the American war can be found
in mere dynastic struggles or local insurrec-
tions This is deliberate division of great
people into two hostile camps, such as has not
been seen in Western Europe since the highest
questions of religion and polity were first pre-
sented to the half informed minds of those
ages. Nor can the proceedings of the Ameri-
cans, indeed, sustain a comparison with the
ancient contests. When Franchmen fought
Frenchmen at Jarnac and Montcoutour, it was
for lofty principles of religious faith. When
Englishmen fought Englishmen at Marston,
Moor and Naseby, it was for high principles
of political right. In those days, too, war was
not thought so hateful as now. Little, how
ever of such excupation can be pleaded for
the Americans. They are living in all the il
Illumination of reason, and the full blaze of day.
The North may bejustifed in its denunciation
of slavery, but it is not fighting for the pur-
pose of driving slavery out of the land. The
South may be justified in protecting it's indie
pendcnce, but that independence was not as
sailed. Stripped of its preteXts and trappings,
rfo do,
territory, struggle for aggrandizement. The
people of the South desire to settle new re-
| gions and organize tariffs without reference to
the wants of the North, while the people of the
North want to retain the Southern Provinces
under the Federal Government as contribute
ries to the strength and grandeur of the Union.
We might say something, perhaps, for either
side though most for the North, but nothing
that we could say would be a justification Of
civil war. The anachronism is dreadful. Bat
ties between such combatants, and in such a
cause, will be the most unnatural and incredi-
BILE of conflicts. Free, enlightened, self educa
ting and self-governing Americans will be
Staying each other like the very Indians whom
they supplanted on the soil-like the very
savages whose bornes lie buried under bar
rows the monuments of " civil war" in days
when nothing better was known.
1t is mournful thing to reflect upon-too
mourntul indeed to allow any malicious morali-
zing. We cannot afford to discourse on the
shipwreck of Democracy, for more than De-
mocracy is involved in the ruin. Every ap-
pliance and advantage which could render a
community wise, every institution which was
reputed to render men prudent, has been found
utterly insufficient to preserve them from even
the worst of follies. There is not one of the
much praised institutions of the Union but ap-
pears in this day of trial to be opening in a
wrong direction. The Americans have COM
paratively no standing army and no warlike
estimates; but the result of their usages in
this respect is that every man, being soldier
on his own account, takes naturally to fight
ing and that armies raised for the most
shocking of purposes with celerity that could
hardly be paralleled under the most absolute
military governments. The Americans are
habituated to selfgovernment but that only
renders them less amenable to control, and
communicate the passions of a popular insur-
recton to the proceedings of campaign.
They are wealthy, but that enables them to
support a war; and the merchants and money
dealers of the capital have been foremost in
their approval of the Presidents proclamation.
| They are given to those pursuits of trade
which are held to divert men from ideas of
strife, but they outstrip all the nations of the
Old World in warlike fury. They have no
aristocracy to delude" " them into war, and
yet they have plunged into war with such a
|
and g drifting" policy Of European nations far
behind. These enlightened Democrats have
sent across the ocean to purchase from us those
very implements and munitions of war which
we were reved for providing, and will proba-
bly, impress into fratrcidal struggle the great
ship We have built as the most wonderful in
| StrumentS of commerce. Resolutions from
which the Old World statesmen would have
recoiled in horror, have been promptly adopted
by magistrates of a republic. Our great
soldier, with all his iron mind and infieXible
will, was fain to say that there nothing
which should not be done or borne rather than
the country should know an hour of civil war ;
but President Lincoln and President Davis
have closed abruptly with an alternative at
| which the Duke of Wellington stood aghast
1t is this contrast of position and practice which
renders the proceedings of the Americans at
once so shocking and Incredible Those free
citizens of free States to which we are hidden
to look with envy and admiration, are resort
| ing to eXtremitieS far more terrible than the
Last Appeal of Kings" They are commen-
| cling, not foreign conquests, but campaigns
| against countrymen. The Americans may
rest assured that England would desire moth
! ing so much as to see them once more united.
| They come of our own stock, they speak our
own language, they reflect our own faults, and
up to this time they appeared to be continuing
our national grandeur. We cannot without
the deepest sorrow see such people precipi-
tating itself into civil like the half breeds
of Mexico. That this should be the end of the
great American Republic is prospect against
which every friend of humanity and progress
would gladly close his eyes.
The following letter, addressed by Mrs. A. J.