The Athens post. [volume] (Athens, Tenn.) 1848-1917, 1862-04-11
They Intend to Reduce us to Vas
salage.

From the Southern Confe6eracy.1
The Yankees intend to subdue us. and
placeus in a position where revolt will
be inpossible-no matter what burdens
nor how onerous, may be imposed upon
us. One plan is to take away all State
governments, obliterate State lines cut
up th, country into convenient divisions
to sun their purposes, reduce us to a ter
r1tor'afcondition, and appoint all our Gov
erneE, Judges, Marshals, District Attor-
Pneys, collectors, &c., with Congress to en-
act laws for us, or revise all that our ter
ritorial Councils may enact before they
are to be of force. A bill to carry out
this programme is now before the YAM
kee Congress. 1t, or something like it,
will be sure to pass. Then an abolition
President will appoint all these officers to
come down here and tyranize over us and
introduce their most odious doctrines and
ideas in all their worst features. A
guard will be placed at every town and
at every mans door, ifneel be. We will
be watched--a perpetual surveillance
kept over our actions, words, corrcspon-
dence, and associations. Liberty of the
press vii be at an end, and liberty itself
will be gone for ever. These are the de-
signs. The machinery intended to ac-
complish these purposes is now in motion,
and will accomplish them if we permit it.
Prentice of the Louisville Jomnal pro-
tests most vehemently against the meas
ure. In his Journal Of the Sd March, now
before us, he has long editorial, written
with his usual severity and ability, from
which we take the following:
Its purpose is confessed plainly enough
in the effect ascribed to the expedient by
its inventors. They with one accord as
sert that the effect will he to abolish slave
ry in every seeding State. Unquestion-
ably this is the sole purpose Of the expo
dent.
Its contemplated operation is not left
to conjecture. The Territorial condi-
ton, according to the abolitionists, is one
of complete dependency on the will of
NbISItSS, NlltlI, It's tItN COulcHu, Is
bound wherever its jurisdiction extends
to abolish slavery, and, moreover, is
bound not to admit a slave State into the |
Union. When, therefore, the States in |
rebellion shall be thrown back into the |
territorial condition, Congress, as the de-
vice contemplates, will abolish slavery in
the whole of them, and re-admit them
into the Union as free States or not adj
NIT them at all. This is the process
We think the abolitionists in Congress
have now proposed their worst. We do
not believe that in relation to our affairs
the ingenuity and the impudence of men
or devils could get beyond this. 1t is the
ne Plus ultra of abolition lawlessness and
desperation.
When we consider that it utterly re-
pudiates the soem and oft repeated
pledges of every branch of the govern
ment Us well as the organic principle of
the government itself, when we consider
that it does this Tor the sake of abolish
ing the slave institutions and destroying
the municipal freedom OF the States
which have rebelled under the appre-
hersion of this very result and that the
nation is seeking to win back to their al
legiance, when we consider that if car
ried out its inevitable effect would be
the permanent destruction of the govern
ment, when, in short, we consider that
it combines in itself conspicuously all the
arbitrariness and all the wickedness and
all the woes Of secession and abolition.
ism, we confess that we feel that it is too
monstrous and too fragrant in its monsi,
rousness to require serious discussion.-
The project in our judgment, is the most
atrocious one ever proposed in the legis-
iature of free nation but its very afro
city makes argument unnecessary. 1t
cannot be necessary to argue against
proposition which, under the circumstan-
ces, every enlightened patriot must re-
gard as branding its authors as public en-.
emies and as emitting them to the dunge-
on or gallows.
Now we predict, that when the meas
ure is adopted by the Yankee govern
ment, that corrupt and unprincipled
Prentice will acquiese, adhere to and de-
fend the government, as it has done in
all other cases when it has protested,
threatened, clustered, and then submit
ted to Federal outrages in Kentucky.