The Cass County Republican. [volume] (Dowagiac, Mich.) 18??-1880, 1863-06-18
From the Evening Journal
Assaulting the Administration in time Of
Ciuil MAR

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In an ordinary war-by which we
mean Legitimate rupture between ouI
own Government and any foreign ma
tion-the press can do little harm by
violently attacking the Administration
in power for such mistakes and policy
as it may commit and assume. In
such case-and preoedents are nu
merous-the press is but the monitor
the medium of public opinion, acting
as restraint upon any action that may
rebound to the permanent injury of the
nation, or prolong the war, or change
its character to that of something
worse. Sc far the membership of the
press is not without its good effects,
and unobjectionable.
But we are now in the midst of an
unnatural, an internscins war, in which
the most unnational and unwarlike
strategy of part of our oao'e nation
was turned against Us without warn
ing note, or without a cause. The
enemy we had 10 meet were those
with whose every interest our own had
been closely linked by commercial and
governmental ties-ties which they
rudely severed with the sabre and bay
onst, aiming at the life blood of the
very Government which had so long
protected and cherished the interests
of the whole country, without regard
to sectional lines. The present AID
ministration had to shoulder the whole
of this tremendous load of treason, to
protect the Constitution, and to restore
the Union to its integrity, by the sub
jugation of the rebels, for no ground
for compromise was left that would
insure permanent or satisfactory
peace. With this enormous task the
Administration has labored faithfully
and effectually for more than two
years. If it has not stamped armies
out of the earth," it has appealed to
the patriotism of the nation, and the
armies have been raised from the best
sinew and muscle that the land could
produce. What that army has done,
the proud record OF the past will show.
We have, by the forces employed on
the land and sea, driven the enemy al.
most to his last ditch, recovered State
after State from the rebels and held
them under the old flag, where. by the
blessing of God, they must and shall
forever remain.
And there was another vital and i'm
portant phase in this war, which is not
feature of war generally between two
distinct Governments. Coming so sud-
denly upon Us, the rebellion muddled
the opinions of some of those in the
North who should have been uncondi-
tionally for the restoration Of the Gov
eminent; and in the spirit of disunion,
while they dared not openly join the
rebel armies and fight for the secession
movement, they were still unsettled
and unhappy because the Administra-
ton was not partisan, or, if you please,
not Denaooratic,-when the fact is, that
partisaDism itself had wrought so much
treason as to endanger the whole ma
ton. These men chung to party lines,
which should have swept away until
the rebellion was subdued, and said it
would never do to give the Republicans
credit for putting it down that, rather
than support Mr.. Lincoln and his Cab
met in anything, they would sooner sub
nit to a final dissolution of the Union,
and the destruction of the nation that
it was better to attain peace on any
terms, however humiliating, than to
continued war SO fraught with destruc-
ton to 'our Southern brethren )" that
they would never encourage enlist
ments in the National army and that
they would place every obstacle in their
power in the progress of our armies.
Men never kept their word better
than they did. Their papers huzzasd
for "ths Union as it was" when they
knew that they lied by saying it; and
they huzzaed for s'ths Constitution a,
it is" when every paragraph in their
columns was senseless fling at the
President, and the Secretaries, and the
military and naval officers who had de-
voted their lives, their fortunes and
their sacred honOrs to maintain that
Constitution as it was, and is, and shall
be-unchanged in its power and moi
prevented in its language.
Talk Of the freedom of the press a.
being abridged by the Administration
Look at the New York Worldthe Chi
cage Times, the Dubuque Herald, ct ia
genus an ferno onsne-papers having no,
/ Ill, tho e,,r;t IF rahalliop hint onapix