The Burlington weekly hawk-eye. [volume] (Burlington [Iowa]) 1860-1876, 1863-05-02
A Louisiana Shareholders View
of Affairs.
WEST FELIc1ANA, March II.

WEST FELICIANA, March II.
To Chthbert Built, Esq, Collector Port OF
NeW Orleans:
MY DEAR SIR: had Just seen your ap-
pointment announced in the newspapers,
and was rejoicing over it, drinking your
health, unfortunately out of my last bottle
of claret. Your appointment was due to
yourself personally, and to your sacrifices
and am sure it will exert a salutary influ-
ence on public opinion. 1t will crafty
your friends, it will encourage the friends
of the Union in the South to persevere in
their faith and in their efforts, and it will
show that the Government does not over
look them or undervalue them.
am no friend, and cannot be expected
to be, of the policy of the Administration
on a certain great question, but I regard it
only as temporary policy, forced upon
It by the inexorable necessities of war.
Golden opportunities have been offered to
the South to preserve it's peculiar institu-
ton in the State in which the war found
1t, and yet cherish the hope that before
another year transpireS, the old condition
OF things will be restored. A fatal mad
ness has prevailed or the guarantees offer
ed to the South would long since have been
accepted. The Northern Republicans de-
nounce Slavery as the curse of the South.
This is not so. The curse is not negro
slavery. The curse is, we are the slaves of
politicians, and they have ruined US. Our
people are not like the Northern people con-
centrated in towns, manufactures and capi-
tails; educated universally, and accustomed
to the discussions of the lyceum, the lecture
room, the pulpit and the press. We are
purely agricultural, dispersed over vast
extent Of territory, few newspapers circu-
lating among us, and the masses deriving
their notion of politics in the main from the
speeches of Members of Congress and other
itinerant orators. Hence the prevalence of
error. Hence the widespread delusiOn
that the election of Mr.. Lincoln would ruin
the South, and that Secession was the only
remedy. Secession never sprang from the
people; on the contrary, the doctrine had
been distinctly broachedseveralt times with
IN the last fifteen years, and had been re-
Jected by every Southern State, save South
Carolina. Even those that acknowledged,
as once did, following Mr.. Jefferson, the
abstract constitutional right of secession,
rejected it as a practical measure. In our
towns and cities, in Vicksburg, Jackson
and Natchez, in Baton Rouge and New Or
leans, where the people were the best in
structed, the majority were opposed to Sc
cesslon. But the politicians, acting ON the
scattered and uninstructed rural popula-
ton, We're enabled to carry over two States
out of the Union by the arbitrary acts of
conventions that refused to submit their
ordinances to vote of the people.
1t is remarkable fact, too, that the per-
sons most prominent in these conventions
We're men that had previously rejected null
llhcation and secession, but who perhaps,
not realizing all they had hoped for under
the Union, plunged madly into revolution.
Take Slidell, Governor Moore, Sparrow,
kenner, Morse, Conrad, and others, in
Louisiana, and Davis, the Yergers, and
many others in Mississippi. The best
Union speeches ever read were delivered
by Davis, only three or four years since, in
Maine, when he was, believe, the guest of
governor Shepley. He commenced his
political career as candidate of the Union
democracy of that State. Disappointed
ambition, operating on q temperament no.
torlonsly selfish, made him what he is, and
brought us to what we are-the slaves of q
military despotism.
The newspapers that you see in the South
are not echoes of public sentiment. They
are mainly in the hands of young, igno-
rant men, or the instruments of Davis, hay-
ing no property but the largesses they re-
ceive from Richmond, and therefore howl
ing war" when the great body of the
people sigh for peace, and would gladly re-
call the past. This feeling generally pre-
walls among our large planters, especially
among those who, like myself, are natives
of the State.
1t is great error to suppose that the