Worcester daily spy. [volume] (Worcester [Mass.]) 1850-1888, 1863-03-19
From the Hartford Daily Press
The True Issue.

Ihe True ISSUE
BY HON. FRANCIS GILLETTE.
Curse on the innoVatng hand, that 'tempts it!
Remember him, the villain, righteous Heaven,
In thy great day of vengeance Blast the traitor
And his pernicious counses; who, for wealth,
For poW'r, the pride OF greatness, or revenge,
Would plunge his native land in civil war
Rol0e'S Jane Shore.
When the news of the fall of fort Sumter
reached Richmond the rebels of that city, in
the intoxication of their frantic joy, seized
slave boy, and seated him on the head of the
statute of Washington, which stood in one OF
its public squares. Horrible PROCLAMATION Bru-
tai outrage! Barbarous indignity! Such are
the EXPLANATIONS which this shameful deed
prompts to the lips of the true hearted, who
venerate the memory OF the great liberator and
father Of his country. Phe slave surmOunt-
ing Washington! Slavery exalted above lib
erty-could the rebellion have filter SYM
Dol?
This act of madness, so spontaneous and
insulting to the dear memory of Washington,
illustrates, as with sunlight, the nature and
objects of the rebellion. That slave-boy, as
he sat upon that marble head, and heard the
jubilant shouts and jeers of the impious viii
lains who mounted him there, must have had
some inkling, at least of the significancy of
the scene. A slave sitting upon the monu
mental head of Washington! In that disgust
ing spectacle the world sees the character and
aims of the rebel-chiefs who plunged the ma
ton into war. 1t is thus symbolized as war
of despotism against democracy; of absolu-
tism against freedom, waged by band of
GOd-detying and man-crushing conspirators,
who, for a long time, have been pouring out
their Walls of wrath upon freedom, and cupsing
her brave defenders. They have been scout
ing democracy as a pestilent phantasm per-
nicious to society, and lauding slavery as the
''COrner stone of all good government, and
the harbinger of the political millennium.
They have declared, over and over again,
their hatred Of every thing free, and their de-
termination to extend the law of slavery over
the whole country. In 1886, Gov. McDuflie
predicted within twenty-five years the triumph
OF slavery over the north, and the subjuga-
ton of its laboring population which, said he,
''bleached or unbleached, is dangerous ele-
ment in the body polite"
Some twenty years ago Calhoun, the father
OF notification and secession, stood up in the
senate of the United States and declared the
doctrine OF equal human rights set forth in the
declaration of the fathers, to be rhetorical
flourish" and attempted to refute the asser-
ton therein, that call men are created equal"
in political rights, by plumply denying that
men are created at all, but that 'babies are
born, and men grow from themm This was
the great discovery of the great nullifer.
This rebellion had its source directly in a
deep and malignant hatred of freedom and
free government. Its diabolical aim is to
crush democracy, and erect slave oligarchy
on its ruins. 1t is often said to have had its
origin in slavery. This is true in certain
sense. But,fOr the debauchery and perverson
of slavery this hatred would not have been
engendered, and instigated its victims to mad
Tho N Of Sl &c tba Cirpaan puD
which has transformed men into beasts, and
made them fit for treason. While it is true,
then, that the rebellion sprang primarily from
that odious phase of character superinduced
by slavery, it is no less true, that secondarily,
it grew directly out of a lust for power, vault
ing ambition, aristOcratic contempt OF the
poor, and morbid laundering after the gew-
gaws and trappngs of royalty. Hence the
war was undertaken, not so much to strength
en-, extend and perpetuate slavery, as to sub
vert our free government, and establish
despotism. With this end in view, the rebel
chiefs haughtily spurned all compromise, and
Selling their swords, struck for revolution.
They had really no fear, as some of them
frankly said, of any injustice from the Lin
coin administration, and confidently anticipa-
ted the full enjoyment of all their rights under
the constitution; but not content with this
they wanted, as they said, different cOnsti-
tuition based on slavery.
sit is gross mistake" says DeBow in his
Review, ''to suppose that abolition alone IS
the cause of dissension between the north and
south. We are the most aristocratic
people in the world. Pride of caste, and col
or, and privilege, makes every man an aristo-
crat in feeling. At the north, the
progress and tendency of opinion are to pure
democracy, less government, anarchy, and
agrarianism. Military despotiSm as
far preferable co northern democracy"
Says l.. w. Spratt of South Carolina, in
letter to the Charleston Mercury Having
achieved one revolution to escape democracy
at the north, it Slavery must still achieve
another to escape it at the south" That is,
according to his argument, must reopen the
African slave trade, and exclude free labor by
filling the south with slaves.
Says A. H. Stephens of Georgia, the rebel
vice president :--"This stone slavery which
was rejected by the first builders Washing
ton and his compatriots !, SIS become the head
of the corner in our new edifice."
Already certain southern newspapers, such
as the Raleigh Standard and the Atlanta In
telligencer, are sounding the tocsin of peril to
the confederate government from vast con-
spiracy which has been discovered in rebel
dom, Sin favor of military despotism, or a
King. Inelr writer's are alarmed by the re-
marks so common from men in high positions
that "they are tired of freedom" and think
the "English government to be the best gov
eminent on earth" They begin to see the
smoke and flames of the hell toward which
they are drifting under the black flag of Sc
cessionism. and cry out with terror. They
begin to understand the motives which insti-
gated the arch-rebels to lift their red hands
against government which Davis and Steph-
ems, not long before their revolt, had pro-
nounced the 'best government on EARTH" 1t
was, not primarily, to extend and strengthen
slavery, but under this pretext, as president
jackson had predicted, to subvert this govern
ment and substitute a desp0tiSm; to change
democracy into absolutism. The chained
slave, although he appears in the tragedy, is
simply the victim of the plot. On his neck
tIo ,Iu ,rb, efrt tho