Daily Ohio statesman. [volume] (Columbus, Ohio) 1855-1870, 1864-05-16

10 sustain those Influences which made thu
United States the happiest and most pros
porous of nations. But he only contem
plated it, as an initial point from which h,
would, through common interests and kind
ness, move on to more intimate Unior
until In time the Union as 1t was might
again be restored in its primitive fullness
and glory?a
Something more than physical boundaries
and commercial reasons must exist to make
that old Union possible. The President un-
derstands 1t, without giving 1t full empha-
sis, when he says: Friends make laws,
and the identical old questions as to terms
of intercourse" remain after fighting.--
Fighting may do much, it may be admitted;
exhaustion, calamities, and bloodshed may
make it the interest of men to coalesce to
avoid such horrors; but what can produce
Ill people the idem sententidn, de repabhcdY
Can that be forced? If not what will
you add, to and after force, to inspire the
common sentiment which we call patriot
ism?
Many sad and harsh experiences may be
ours before that event. Military rule, an
archy, destruction of individual opinion,
speech, aud liberty; all these may be in the
path of the old or of another polity. These
will be our experiences, unless we take the
straight short and right line of the Consti-
tuition. We may wander forty years in a
political wilderness before we attain the
promise of our youthful and exultant ma
tionality.
Before attempting to show how this ma
tionality may be restored, it would be best
| to define it. What, then, is Nationality p
| Let the definition of the English logician,
John Stuart Mill, answer: 1--WE mean q
a principle of sympathy, not of hostility; of
union, not of separation. We mean feel
ing of common interest among those who
live under the same Government, and are
contained within the same natural or his
torical boundaries. We mean that one part
of the community shall not consider them
selves as foreigners with regard to another
part; that heyshaH cherish the tie chich holds
them together; shall feel that hey are one peo-
pie; that their lot is cast tOgether; that euiI 10
any Of their feliou-coultrynen is erI 10 them
SelreS; and that they cannot selfishly free
themselves from their share of any com
mon Inconvenience by seyering the con-
neXion."
Is it not strange to dispassionate think
er, that those who are not hostile in the
sense of hate to the South; those who woud
WOO them to the ancient order and Union,
by reason, old associations the alluremen s
of peace and patriotism, to make again OF
the circle of equal States, the old federal
sovereignty, should be held to be the least
national; while those who have so far for
gotten the common interest of all, under
the same Government: who regard them
selves as alien to the South, even as the South
regard themselves as alien to us, should
be held as the most national? / do pro-
claim it, on the basis of logic incontestible,
that he among us who wishes most evil to
any part of the country IS THEMoRAL TRAI-
TOR AND SOCIAL ANARCH. They, too, who
would selfishly free themselves from their
share of any common inconvenience by sew
ering the connection like those of the south,
are also enemies to the whole country.
What can we think of his national feeling,
who would so disregard the interest of one
half of his own country, as to wish to see
it utterly erased by war; tabula rasa; its
cotton crop, and other exports, worth $500
OO0.000 annually, which is required as the
basis of our commerce and for the payment
of our debts and which gave the nation the
advantage of the world, entirely ruined or
transferred to other and alien hands: its
laborers coloniZed in tropical lands to bene-
fit foreigners or suddenly freed without
benefit to themselves or to the superior
race, and its very statehood blotted out, be-
cause of the sedtion of its people!
We are powerful in proportion as we are
national. If we should follow the advice
of passion and treat the Southern States
now in civil war as England treated Ireland,
we become weak and denationalized. If we
pursue the South with licentious uncivic
soldiery, gloating with anticipations of the
plunder of private effects, or with the prom
ises already held out of parcelling out the
lands of the South as the bounty which re-
venge pays for pillage, thus whetting a
tigerlsh appetite for great festival of blood
and rapine. we may be sure that the special
Nemesis which Herodotus traced through
the early eras of history, will haunt the
men who instigate and the men who execute
such fell and imbecile policy. If, as in
Rome once and in Spanish America now,
we Dribe one part OF the nation by the rob-
berry of another portion; then VIC may be
sure that conflicts will be renewed when
exhaustion Is overcome, and our flag, like
That OF Old Spain, will typify river of
blood between margins of gold. If we
would avoid the constant aggregation and
dlslntegration of feeble masses in different
provinces, such as the history of South |
America demonstrates, we must learn to |
carry out better than the President has |
done, his own principle OF friendly legisla- |
ton instead of repellant alienation. Power
iul as are our rarmies--gradually encroach- !
ing amidst many mistakes and vicissitudes |
upon the territory which is insurgent- |
great as are our Parrott guns, and invulner- |
aDie rs are our lronclads, one thing we have |
10 learn yet from history, that our best SOL
dlers are not like Charlemagne's paladins.
of enchanted weanOnS The onIv