Orleans independent standard. [volume] (Irasburgh, Vt.) 1856-1871, 1863-09-11
The Guaranty for Future Union
and Unity.

is to result from the war must necessari-
ly be slow. A nation is not born in a
day, and the fixed ideas of great COM
munity, associated with their hereditary
institutions and all the details of their so.
cial life, cannot be uprooted and supplant-
ed by better ones by any process Of sud-
den conversion. Yet we have no parti-
Gle of doubt that this social renovation i,
to occur in the south, and that there is tc
be national unity hereafter such as
E there never yet has been, and such as
was impossible with the antagonistic sys-
TENS of free and slave labor existing in
the different sections. But it will be the
work Of generation after the war is
over to educate the people of the south
up to the ideas of the north and Of the
present century.
An essential condition of that social
renovation of the south is free intercourse
with the north, and entire liberty of speech
and of the press. Neither Of these have
hitherto existed. When the Union was
first formed the white people of the slave
states were comparatively free. But the
necessities, or supposed necessities, OF
their peculiar institution have been con-
stantly abridgng this freedom. As the
number of slaves increased there were
increased exposures to insurrection, and
free talk about personal liberty became
more and more incendiary, until most Of
the slave states had enacted laws against
freedom of speech and the press, and
where there were no such laws Judge
Lynch was always on hand 10 squelch
with unspming vengeance any utterance
perilous TO the sacred institution. The
southerner of this generation could not
repeat the glorious words of Patrick
Henry and Jefferson and Washington
without being considered an enemy to his
section and forfeiting his life. This is
not rhetoric, but hard fact, as everybody
knows.
1t will perhaps be objected that the
same intolerance Of free opinion may re-
turn again in the southern states after the
war is over. But we hold this to be
morally impossible. 1t requires no gift
of prophecy to see that after the defeat
of the rebellion is accomplished, such of
its instigators and leaders as escape hang
ing will per force be excluded from pub
lie life, and that there is to be period of
great social and political agitation in the
south, new men and new principles stri |
wing for the mastery, and all equally |
claiming and exercising the utmost lati-
tude of discussion on all public questions,
slavery among the rest, The poor whites
of the south, who have fought the battles
of slavery in vain, and suffered for a
cause the defeat of which was for their
real interest, if they could not have seen
it, will certainly come to see it; and it
will be one OF the most natural and al |
most inevitable results Of the reaction,
already showing itself at the south, to
array these non.slaveholders on the side
of freedom. Most certainly they will in
sist upon their own right to free speech,
and will exercise it. And this is all that
is essential to the renovation of the south
Neither slavery, nor any Of the social
despotisms connected with it, can stand
before free discussion.
But there is another and more impor-
tant element still that should enter into
the account. The national government
will hereafter have actual power at the
south, which it has not had to any great
extent for nearly half century. The
government Of the United States has
been able to stretch its protecting hand
across the ocean and defend its citizens
from outrage in the islands of the Pacific
or in the interior of Asia, but it could do
nothing to shield its own citizens in half
the states of the Union. They might be
robbed, scourged, hung, or hayed alive,
by mob law, or by state law, and the gov
ernment of the United States was pow
erless to avenge the wrong. Citizens of
Massachusetts could not express in South
Carolina the sentiments common to Mas
sachusetts men and to all civilized men
outside of the south and the kingdom of
Dahomey, without exposure to torture
and ignominious death. This disgraceful
fact, that the general government was
powerless to protect its own citizens on
its own soil, while it could protect them
everywhere else, had existed and been
submitted to so long, that the people had
nearly lost all proper sense Of its enor-
nifty. Now the suppression of this re-
bellion involves the establishment of the
Just power of the government throughout