American citizen. [volume] (Butler, Butler County, Pa.) 1863-1872, 1864-02-17

ocrat Is an impossible thing ana that
any man here who would draw a sword in
such QUARREL mean on this side of it
is no better than Black Republican.
And so it is, that while all the Democracy
| of Butler and Burnside and Hooker and
other fighting generals of that stamp, who
have proved that they we're in earnest, has
failed to shelter them from the denuncia-
tions of the rebel papers in Richmond or
New York, the non-combatant qualities of
the grave-digger of the Chickahominy
and the loiterer at Bull Run have made
him the idol of the Democracy in both
those capitals. IF the gentleman from
Kentucky, who was taxed few days ago
by his colleagues with infdelity to his
pledges to vote for war Democrat, had
adverted to the sentiment to which have
just referred, he might have answered
that a war Democrat was myth-a per-
sonage even more apocryphal than Prester
John or the man with the iron mask.
IF it be true, however, that compulso-
ry levy of men for the protection of the
government or the enforcement of its laws
is anti-republcan, then say again that
republican government is just as impossi-
BILE thing as war Democrat The nation
which cannot command the military SER
vices of its people has no guarantee of
life, and must inevitably perish in its first
formidable CONFUSION. To presume that
they will all rush to its standard at the
first summons, and that they will adhere
to it alike through good and i'll fortune,
alike through sunshine and through storm,
is to suppose in the face of our present
experience that it contains no bold traitors
who will lift their hands against it in bat
tie, no cowardly miscreants who, with pro-
fessions of loyalty on their lips, will adopt
the safer policy of sneaking from its de-
fense, oraiding and encouraging those who
are attempting to overthrow it. The time
was when this service was privilege of
rank or fortune when the soldier served
without wages, although he derives his
name from the idea of pay, and when the
craven who refused to respond to the sum-
mons of his country was visited with the
dire anathemawhich is so well paraphrased
by the genius of the immortal Scott, and
finds its climacterc in the imprecation,
Woe to the traitor, woe y A greater
than he has remarked that the age of
chivalry has gone, and the age of sophis-
ters and economists has succeeded" 1t
was not SO at the commencement of this
rebellion.
I happened to be at the seat of govern
ment of Pennsylvania when the news of
the bombardment of Sumter came over
the electric wires, and shook its capital as
with an earthquake throe, then sped on its
fiery errand along the Susquehanna, and
the Delaware, and the limpid Allegheny,
until it reached the distant shore of the
great lake which bathes her northwestern
confines The fiery cross that passed from
hand to hand and gathered the clansmen
of the hills around the banner of their
chief never travelled, never lighted such
conhagration as was kindled by that
message. Before the setting of another
sun hundred thousand Pennsylvania
men were begging for the privilege of
laying down their lives in the defense Of
the insulted flag of their fathers. The
political managers of the Democratic par
ty who had bargained against coercion and
pledged themselves that Pennsylvania
would take side with the rebellious States
were appalled, by the demonstration, and
skunk away from the public gaze which
would have blasted them. 1t was only
when reverses overlook our arms-revers-
es which were the consequences OF the
unsuccessful effort to propitiate themselves
by taking counsel with and employing
men of the same type of thought-that
they ventured to reappear, and managed
to seduce the loyal men of the Democrat
ic party into the belief that a Republican
Administration was unfit to conduct the
war, which they reinforced by the argu
ment that it wassobliged to borrow it
generals almost exclusively from the Dem
ocratic party. If a draft was made nee
essary after such demonstration it wa
through their agency. If it has proved
ineffective or unpopular, it is because the,
have endeayored to make it so.
The country knows how the question
was dealtlwith by the Democratic authori
ties of New York. It knows, too, tn
process by which the Democratic judge
of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvani
undertook, with indecent precipitaney
and in the exercise of jurisdiction en-
tirely new, to restrain the execution o
: | l. Ill. a - -.