The Emporia news. [volume] (Emporia, Kan.) 1859-1881, 1863-02-28
EsWATCHMAN, WHAT OF THE
NIGHT!o
NO. III.

U. III.
Happiness is the desire of every rational
being; and revelation, nature, history, and
the universal experience of mankind, teach
US that this desire never can be realized
at the expense of virtue and truth how
amazing, then, is the blind ness and stupid
ty of a government which derives all its
power from the consent of the people, to so
exercise its high functions as to defeat the
end of its creation! A compliance with the
demands of eternal right IS condition of
happiness-it is an immutable law of our
being: governments, no more than individ
uals, can violate this law without suffering
the penalty of its infraction.
We attempted, in our last, to show that
all our national suffering was the legitimate
result of our unfaithfulness to the high trust
which had been committed to our charge;
that the measure Of our transgressions was
full, and that God was bringing US to judg
ment. If we are'right in these conclusions,
our only salvation rests in reformation, and
in bringing forth fruits meet for repentance.
If yielding to the unholy demands of the
slave power has brought woe aud misery
upon the nation, it is an obvious truth that
persisting in this course will ultimate in
plotting it out forever.
We would not be uncharitable, but to us
it seems a selfevident truth, that all the
afliction under which the nation is groaning
is traoeable to an unmanly yielding to the
encroachments of Slavery; indeed, it does
appear to US that no one who is not will
fully, devilshly blind, could fail to perceive
and acknowledge this truth.
Had we adhered to the policy our fathers
enunciated in the Ordinance of 1887, in re-
lation to the Territories, and resisted the
admission of Missouri, all would have been
well with us. The struggle would have
been fierce, but brief. Had we, at later
period, resisted the admission of Texas, this
rebellion would not now be upon US. Had
we insisted on the unconditional admission
of California, and resisted the passage of the
Fugitive Slave Law, and the Compromise
of 1850. we should have had no rebellion
now. Had we met, with manly frmness,
the attempt to repeal the Missouri Compro-
mise, and put an effectusl veto upon that
greatest of all political humbugs, "Squatter
| Sovereignty" we should have had no diff
Guilty IN the settlement of Kansas, and no
rebellion now. Had no party in the North,
for the sake of party ascendenoy, sympa.
thized with the rebels of the South, given
them aid and comfort and promised them
assistance in their hellish designs agains
the Government, our arms and arsenal'
would not have been wrested from US, mol
Fort Sumter battered down And, last o
all, had the present Administration taken
retrospective view of the past, and. in tn,
light of Christian philosophy, traced tn
logic of events up to the crisis which me
f its advent into power; could it have had
full conception of the national malady, and
turning deaf ear to every suggestion @
J compromising timidity, entered upon it
cure with q robust earnestness that woult
/, have inspired confidence in its power ant
skill-could il have realized The magnitud
of it's high responsibilities, and in all tb
sublime majesty of truth grappled with tn
monster of the age. and with a firm
and undoubting purpose boldly strucl
! for liberty and right, the rebellion. we be
r lieve, would have been crushed in si
months. But, alas our excellent Presi