Weekly national intelligencer. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1841-1869, 1864-10-13

1850
In the beginning OF the war Mr. Lincoln
thought it might well be questioned whether at
that time ga majority of the legally quail
fed voters Of any State, except perhaps South
| Carolina, was in favor of disunion. There is
much reason 10 believe" he added, "that the
Union men are tho majority in many, if not in
every other one, of the so-called Seeded States.
: The contrary has not been demonstrated in any
one of them. 1t is ventured to affirm this, even
of Virginia and Tennessee for the results Of an
election, held in military camps, where the bay
'onets are all on one side of the question voted
siupon, can scarcely be considered as demonstrate
Sing popular sentiment At such an election all
the large class who are at once, for the Union
q and against coercion, would be coerced to vote
| against the Union"
! Such was the language he held in his message
to Congress convened in extraordinary session on
the 4th of july 1861 Does any body suppose
that the same is true to-day, that he now enter
tains any such belief? And, if SO, whence comes
it that in e war for the Union" We have extin-
guished in the hearts Of the Southern people that
love for the Union which Mr.. Lincoln believed to
exist in the minds Of majority on the 4th Of july
1851? The answer to this question carries with it
the most irrefragable argument against the perpe-
tuation Of the present Administration in power
which it has welded in way to rob our victories
of their benefcent results, and to render restora-
ton Of the Union more doubtful than on the day
after the guns Of Beauregard had opened their fire
| on Fort Sumter.
A
! In the beginning of the war it was thought pru-
dent to conciate the loyal population Of the South
j And months after the war had begun Mr.. Lincoln
not only deemed it prudent to foster this sentiment
but in the absence of such sentiment he held that
the war would lose its basis in and justice.
To this effect he used the following language, in
an interview he had with Mr.. Representative
MALLORY, of Kentucky, as now publicly reported
by that gentleman and as communicated to US soon
after its utterance The President said
'Mr Mallory this war; so far thing with
it, carried with the idea that there is Union sent
men these States which, set free from the control now
held it by the presence of the Confederate or rebel
power will be sufficient to replace those States n the
Union If mistaken in this there il no such sent
ment there if the people of those States are determined
with unsnimiy, with feeling approaching unanimy,
that their States shall not be members Of this Confederacy
beyond the power Of the people OF the other States to
Il
conngeDcyn the contingency that there not that SEN
timent there. this war is not only an error 1t is crime
Such being the view of the President, we might
have expected that, by all his hopes Of the Union,
he would have resisted policy which had for its
inevitable consequence to extinguish this sent-
ment And we believe the President would have
done so if he had possessed the requisite frmness
| to adhere to his own convictions of duty and ex-
pediency, and if he had not been overborne by the
pressure of what he calls the Greeley fac
\ ton" They clamored for change of measures.
In an evil hour the President yielded, and hence
our condition to-day
| Now that the radical policy has been thrust on
the country its advocates forcsee that it was from
the beginning, only the prelude Of interminable
war and Unreasonable debt" with loss Of the Union
in the end Only three forms of proceeding are
conceivable on which to reintegrate the Seeded
State. as members of the Union They are, firstly,
the policy of determination, which looks to the extir
patton not only of slavery but Of the present white
population of the South that the land may be occu-
pied by its Northern conquerors and planted with
their habits and institutions This theory of war,
we need not say, is as impossible in practice as it
is frantic in conception. We may, therefore, safe
i ly exclude such plan from any rational inquiry.
Il The second process looks to q reconstruction Of
the Union on the basis of the black population Of
the South, which, it is assumed, always has been
and still is "loyar" to the Government.
The remaining theory of restoration assumes that
the Union is to be restored Only by the political
cooperation Of the white inhabitants of the South,
and hence the adherents of this theory hold that
policy Of Cancellation addressed to the white people
Of the South is as much necessary element in the
work of restoration as the defeat and dispersion of
the Southern armies.
Each Of these last two theories has its logical
supporters. Mr.. Whiting, for instance, the Soil
ctor of. the War Department, is an advocate and
expounder of the former. The legitimate and ne
cessary result of the policy he espouses is not only
foreseen by him, but has been publicly confessed
in his well-known letter to the Philadelphia Union
League. In that letter he wrote:
Az the success Of the Union shatbecome
certain and apparent to the enemy in various localities,
they will lay down and cease fighting Their bitter
and deeprooted hatred Of the Government and of all
Northern men who not traitors, and Of all Southern
men who are loyal will still remain interviewer in every
fibre Of their hearts, and will be made, il possible,
intense by the humiliation of the conquest and subsection