The Ashland union. [volume] (Ashland, Ashland County, Ohio) 1854-1868, 1863-10-07
The Effect of the Abolition Policy
in Strengthening the Rebellion
and i'm Producing the slaughter
of our Soldiers.

A gentleman who has spent the past year
in the South, and who left Richmond about
1--WE weeks ago, furnishes the following to the
New York Herald:
THE middle and poorer classes, and the ma
jority of the soldiers in the rebel army, do not
hesitate to say, in the most public manner,
that if they felt assured of their property be-
ing respected, they would wish for peace to-
morrow. They say if they could come back
under the old Constitution Of the United States
and that of their State Governments, they
would cease to cry war and demand peace.
"The emancipation proclamation recruited
more men for the rebel army than it freed ne
groes. 1t exasperated the very class of South
eru people that we are speaking of, and bro't
them forward as volunteers without waiting to
be conscripted. 1t was better than a draft for
the rebel Government, for, in three days after
its publication in Richmond, three thousand
men, under Is and over As years of age, came
forward and enlisted, when, before, they had
no idea of taking an active part in hostilities,
and even opposed the war"
The foregoing statement of a very prevalent
desire amorg the mass of The people in many
portions of the SO called SCI eded States to re-
turn to The Union, if they could have their
right OF persons and property respected as oil
old under our National Constitution and their
- OOHCi uAbCutc Il COTIOOJIdtG0 ny mduJ
similar staten ents, recently published in Ad.
ministration journals. They prove this-that
the Southern people have been exasperated
and united in rebellion by the Abolition or
Emancipation policy. That policy strengthens
and nerves the rebellion ; the Democratic and
Conservative policy, which would restore the
Union with all the rights of the States unim-
paired, on the other hand, would disarm the
rebellion and produce a reaction against it in
the South. that would of itself crush it out
But the Emancipation policy has changed the
Instruction, from what the Abolitionists al
legged 1T was at the beginning, if such it were,
a ''slayeholders' rebellion" into a rebellion OF
the masses of the people at the South against
the free negro war policy.
llHow mean, Ease and hypocritical, then, in
the journal of this city, to assert, as it does in
its issue of September 90, that in frort Of
Chattanooga, "our brave boys have been sac
riiced by thousands to the internal ambition of
the VALLANDIGHAM faction to seize the power
of Ohio and contr,l the State 1t might be re-
ported with emphasis, and be sustained by the
most unquestionable evidence, that in front OF
Chattanooga. and on many other bloody battle
fields our brave boys-sons, brothers, husbands,
fathers-have been sacrificed by tens of thou
sands to the in1ena1 (using the Journals cpl
uhct) ambition and fanaticism of the BRoUGH
faction-that faction that bullied the President
till they got him to issue, against his ow appa-
rent %inclinat on one Emancipation proclamati n
after another-that faction that made him
pledge the army and navy 10 secure freedom to
negro slaves, and made him say in his last
s Springfield letter that that promise to the ne
groes must De kept-that faction that are will
ling and eager to see the "dance of death" go
on, and the blood of our brave boys poured
about like water, in order to make good that
promise to Southern negroes.--Statesman.