Sunbury American. [volume] (Sunbury, Pa.) 1848-1879, 1864-06-04
OLD SERIES, VOL. "a, NO. 81.

But these gentlemen, the neutrals of th
border and the conservatives of the North
Arcadians all-have, / think, about perform
ed their mission. They have done. not tb,
work they intended, but the one they hav,
been put upon by the great Ruler of nations
It was bloody work, but it was, perhaps
a necessary one. A blow struck at The
spirit of the proclamations of Fremont and
Hunter, would probably have made an end
OF it for the time being, while it preserved
Its cause. The conservative statesmen were
wanted to make the remedy radical and
sure, by prolonging and exasperating the
STRIFE, and lntensiiying spnd universalizing
the very partial abolition feeling of the
North. 1t was the voice of Jehovah that
spake from the iron throats of those engines
that hurled their defiant missiles against
| our flag at Sumter, just as the same voice
hundred from the clouds and darkness of
Siani, when it promulgated to the world
the great law OF humanity. 1t was the
great proclamation of freedom to the op-
pressed-anteceding that of the President
by nearly two years-that pealed in the ears
OF the lordly chivalry, who held high car
nival on that memorable day on the boule-
Yards of Charleston. The light that blazed
from the muzzles of those guns flashed over
the American armament with radiance
like that which floated chaos, at the fiat of
Omnlpltence, on the first morning of crca-
tlon. Thinking people saw it and rejoiccd.
1t was 1.-THE beginning of the end" of the
long agony under which this nation had
been sweating, as it were, great drops of
blood. The war had become necessity.
which politicians were powerless either to
postpone or avert. Though no abolitionist
till then--I saw it and rejoiccd along
with them. thanked God-as l do now
that by an act of sublime justice such as
the pen of inspiration had never recorded.
and the genius of the dirma never imagined,
lie had put out the eyes of the slave-owne
and guided his own hands to the pillars of
the temple which protected him; that He
had made him drunk with arrogance. and
decreed transsendant suicide by making
himself the Nemesis-the instrument of the
great work, which no merely human agen-
cies could have accomplished. But that
work would have been imperfect without
more; and, by an act of justice equally sub
lime, He called into the counsel the state
men OF the border, along with the advocates
OF human bondage in the North, and neu-
trality and conversation stood hand in hand
oy the bedside OF the sufferer, helping it in
to eternity, and mistaking all the while
like the lachrymose and lugubrious gentle.
man from lndiana-in the sepulchral gloom
of that chamber, of mortality, the un6uried
and offensive corpse over which he still sobs
for the image of dead or dying Union II
the border States, if Kentucky especially
has suifered-as she is claimed to have done
if her dwellings have been desolated and
her soil drenched with the blood of her peo-
pie, she has to thank her statesmen, as we of
the free States do for all the sacrifices 1t has
cost us to save the negro, while we throwing
away the priceless jewels of the North. If
instead OF neutrality which was only ano-
ther name for treason-which the law of So
Ion would have denounced as the worst of
crimes, and the fierce genius of Dante would
have gibbetted in immortal and whitening
yerse-if, instead of dying to the General
Government, and even to her own citizens:
the privilege of organizing troops upon her
soil, she had but opened her arms to a de- |
Iiverer, hundred thousand northern bayo-
nets would have belted her round as with a
wall OF fire, and no hostile foot would have
lett a mark upon her soil. She chose .he
other part. Neutrality flushed slowly into
The sickly and livid hue, the pale disastrous
twilight of conservatism, and sat upon her
;hest and ours until their pulses were almost !
lushed; and, as consequence of all this,
he bravest o. her sons have died ignobly
n the effort to destroy the Union of their
athers, and the most honored of her names
lave gone down in darkness among the
lameess and undistinguished dead, and
lew sleep and felons graves, unknelled, un-
unhonored and unsung."