Weekly national intelligencer. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1841-1869, 1864-09-29
RESTORATION OF THE UNION.

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'raion to represent their opponents offering tc
relinquish the objects which have cost the country
50 dearly at the very moment when they are about
to be attained According to the familiar ilustra-
tlon used by the Secretary of State in his recent
Auburn speech, the bad boy who laughed at grass
cannot Withstand stones, and is about to descend
from the tree and beg the farmers pardon Re-
hecting this same sentiment, Mr.. Senator WILSON,
the chairman of the Military Committee in the
Senate took occasion to say at the meeting recent
y held in Faneuil Hall, in Boston, to celebrate the
victories of Farragut and Sherman, that the rebel
lion was to be put down and the Union restored
"by war, and by war alone"
Ii indeed the great object of this contest could
be attained "by war alone," we might see good
grounds for hope in the steady though slow pro-
gress OF our arms in the South But we think it
must be clear to every thoughtful mind that war
alone cannot restore the Union. As we'll might we
expect the harvest directly to follow the plough.
War is doing its part but that part, though first
in the order of time, is comparatively small part
OF the work necessary to be accomplished before
The rank weeds of rebellion have been turned un-
der by the ploughshare of war, as it has moved
over wide tracts of the territory Of the South, and
new soil has been thrown to the surface, but unless
the statesman follows and sows the seeds of good
will and kindly feeling the ground will remain
sterile, or produce growth scarcely less noxioas
than that which has just been exterminated.
In Tennessee, for instance, war has done all that
war can do. 1t has freed the people as completely
as they can be freed, soithout their opn agency,
from the yoke of the authorities at Richmond At
this moment if the people of Tennessee were really
FACILITATED, or even if any considerable minority of
them 50 desired they could reorganize their State
Government and enter upon the enjoyment Of the
blessings which We go greatly congratulate the
Loyal States on possessing: and SO in other parts
of the South. But not one-tenth of the people are
willing to take this STEP In not single instance
has arespectable attempt at reconstruction followed
the success of our arms Nay, even the feeble at
tempts made to set up city governments in many
places have been found abortive, and the disheart-
ened people have sunk again under the simple but
vigorous rule of the military power.
What is the portion of the South which we have
recovered" worth to than that yet in rebel
onS It something indeed by way of our
national PRIDE to have reasserted the honor flag
but are not fighting merely to crafty our pride or
resent the insults offered to our flag. We shall not
surely keep our armies in the South only prove that
we can keep them there. II is true that we find
there fer the present market for our merchandise,
and we got thence some cotton; but surely no one
would maintain that, commercial operation, the
conquest and occupation of the South would be a
profitable speculation. And yet to that end, and
that end only, does the policy of the Administration
tend Ii we could suppose the last of the insur-
gent armies annihilated; if the usurpiug Govern
ments at Richmond and in the Seeding States
were oil overthrown; if the slaves Of the South
were all emsncipated and their masters reduced to
poverty and subjection-still the existing civil
policy of the Administration affords no hope of
restoration of the Union under the Constitution by
the voluntary cooperation of the Southern people.
The void created by the consuming fires of war
cannot be supplied without the aid and the cordial
cooperation of large part of the population of the
South, and to gain that cooperation not the first
successful step has been taken, but much has been
done to render it impossible. Military governors
and provost marshas, however necessary as pro-
visional agents of the Government, will never
prove satisfactory substitutes for those ministers of
law and justice to whose agency all our feelings and
interests are adapted. We agree with Mr.. Greeley
that we do not want in the South an Ireland or
Poland, Hungary Vepice-a hostile popu-
lation sunk in suen obstructive apathy except
when reused to sudden and murderous insurrec-
tons
Tie policy which Mr.. Lincoln has adopted
in this matter is the natural out-growth of the
principle on which he avowedly acts, and which
he thinks no reproach to the civilization of the
age, but rather glories in proclaiming to the
world. II is that he "may do any thing" which,
in his judgment, will save the Union doctrine
openly avowed in his celebrated interview with the
Chicago deputation in September, 1862, and which
means neither more nor less than that, in the ex-
ercise Of his "war powers" he may rigbtfully
break through all restraints which the people have
imposed upon his authority, and act according to
his own convictions Of right and expedency in the
adoption of measures for the suppression of the in