True Democrat., 1863-03-11

separated as they are a thousand mileS, Dy other States who would keep the peace and live in good wll2 Why this civil war; Whence disunion2 Not from slavery-not because the South chooses to have two kinds of labor instead of one but from sectiond,sm, always and every zwhere disntegra- ting principle. Sectional jealousy and hate-these, cir, are the only elements of conflict between these States, and though powerful. they are yet not at all irrepressible. They exist between families, communities. towns, cities, counties and states; and if not repressed would dissolve all society and govornment. They exist also between other sec tions than the North and South. Sectionalism East, many years ago, the South and West united by the ties of geographical position, migra tion. intermarriage and interest, and thus strong enough to control the power and policy of the Un- ion Il. found us divided only by different forms of labor; and, with consummate but most guilty sagacity, it seized upon the question of slavery the surest and most powerful ipstrumentaity by which to separate the West from the South, and bind her wholly to the North Encouraged every way from abroad by those who were jealous of our prosperity and greatness, and who knew the secret of our strength, it proclaimed the "rrepressble eofinict" between slave labor and free labor. It taught the people of the North to forget both their duty and their interests; and aided by the artificial fragments and influences which money and enter prise had. created between the sea board and the North itpe'suaded the people of that section, also, to yield up every tie which binds them to the gieat valley of the Mississippi, and to join their political fortunes especially, wholly with the East. It resisted the fugitive slave law, and demanded the exclusion of slavery from all the territories and from this District, and clamored against he ad mission of any more slave States into the Union. It organized sectional antslayery party, and thus drew to it's aid as we'll political ambition and in- terest fanstcisn; and after twenty two years of
 ncessant and vehement agi tatiOn, It obtained pos session finally, and upon that issue Of the federal government and of every state government North and { d he fba lSt. of + greatest, most ,ruel, most destructive civil war ever waged. But two years sir, of blood and debt and taxation and incpent commercial ruin teaching the people of the West, and 1 trust of the North also, the folly and madness of this cru sade against African slavery, and the wisdom and necessity of union of the States, our fathers made it, part slave and part free.' . What then, sir, wish 50 many causes impelling. to reunion, Keeps us apart to day? Hate, passion, antagonsm, revenge, all heated seven times hotter by Sir, these, while they last, the most powerful of all motives with people, and with the
 ndi vidual man; but fortunately they are the least durable. They hold dvde cd sway in the same bOsonis with tho nobler qualities of love- justice, reason, placahility; and, except when at their night, are weaker than the sense of interest, and always, in States at least, giveway to it last. No statesman who yields himself up to them can go vern wisely or well snd no State whose policy s controlled by them can either prosper or endure.
 
 and while it lasts, all other motives are subordi nate The virtues Of peace can not flourish, can never find development in the midst of fight ing; and this civil war keeps in motion the centi fug. forces of the Union, and gives to them in creased strength and activity every day. But such, so many and powerful i'll my judgment, are the cementing or centripetal agencies impelling together that nothing bu: perpetual aud strife can keep us always divided.
 Sir, l do not underestimate the power of the prejudices of section, or, what is mach stronger, Of race. Prejudice is coQer and, therefore, more durable than the passions of hate and revenge, or the spirit of antagonism. But, asI have a ready said, its boundary in the United States ls not Mason & Diron's line" The long standing muiu- al jealousies of New England and the South do not primarily grow out of slavery They deeper, and will always be the chief obstacle in the way of full and absolute reunion They are founded in difference of manners, hibits and social life, and different notions about politics, morals and religion. Sir, after all, this whole is not much one of scctiOns-east of all betwe cen the slaveholding and non slaveholding sections - of races, representing not difference ia blood, but mind and it's development, and different types of civilization. IL is the old conflict of the Cavalier and the Roundhead, the Liberast and the Puri- tan; or rather it is conflict upon new issues of the ideas and elements represented by those names. It is a of the Yankee and the Suuthron Said a Boston writer the other day, euogizing New England officer, who fell at Fredericksburg: |" This is a Massachusetts war; Massachusetts and South Carolina made t' But in the beginning, the Roundhead outwitted the Cavalier, and, by skill fu use of slavery and the negro, united all New England fr>t and afterward the entire North and West, and finally sent out to battle against him, Cet and Saxon, German and Knickerbocker, Catholic and Epscopalian, and even part of his own household and of the descendants of his own stock.
 Said Mir. Jefferson, when New England threatened secession some sixty years ago. " No, let u. keep the Yankees to quarrel with" Ah sir, he forgot that qunrreDg is always hazardous experiment, and, after some time, the countrymen of Adams proved themselves too sharp at that work for the countrymen of Jefferson. But every day the con test now tends again to it's natural and original clements. In many parts of the North-wcst-I m ght add of Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York citv--the prejudice against the Yankees'' has always been almost as bitter AS in the South. Suppressed for a little whleby the antisavery sen tment and the war, 1t threatens now to break forth in one of those great but unfortunate popular up- rsings, in the midst of which reason and justice are for the time utterly senced. l speak advis. edly; and let New England heed else she and the whole East, too, in their struggle for power may learn vet from the West the sams lesson which civil war taught to Rome, that eoulqato imperti arcano posse principen allbi, quam Roma feri The people of the W est demand peace, and they begin to more than suspect that New Eng and is in the way. The storm rages; and they believe that she, not slavery, s the The .hipis sore tried i; and messengers and crew are now most ready to propitiate the waves by throwing the il-omened prophet ovcrboard. In plain Engish-not very classic, but most expressve-they threaten to Set New England out in the cold"
 And now, sir. I, who have not drop of New England blood in my veins, but was born in Ohio and am wholly Of Southern ancestry, with slight cross of Pennsylvania Scotch Irish would speak word to the a,of the West and the South in behalf of New England. Sir, some years ago, in the midst of hi gh sectional controversies and speak. the North, which now. in more catholic spirit as a United States man, and for the sake of reunion, would recall. My prejudices, indeed, upon this subject as strong any mans; but, ill this, the day of great national humiliation and calamity, let the voice of prejudice be hushed.
 Sir they who would in New England exclude any reconstruction of the Union, assume that all New Englandcrs are Yankees and Puritans; and that the Puritan or pragmatica element or type of civili zation, has hwavs held undsputed sway. Well, sir Yankees, certainly, they are in one sense; and 90 to old England we are all Yankees, North and South; and to the South just now, or little while ago, we of the Middle or Western States, also, are or were, Yankees, too. But there is really a very
 large and most liberal and conservative nonPuri- tan element in tho population of New England, which for many years struggled for the mastery, and sometimes held it. It divided Maine, New Hampshire and Connecticut, and once controlled e Rhode Island wholly. It held the'sway during the ypvOlution and if thu DpriOd Whenthn conatitution