Dayton daily empire. [volume] (Dayton [Ohio]) 1850-1865, 1864-01-27

bANtAN . NV
war against the South.
The Commercial ON the Causes
OF the War.
The Commercial, in the course of some
comments on a paragraph from the EN-
PRE-, says ''The civil war was the inevi-
table result of the combined rascality and
imbecility of the Administration of JAMES
B~UcHANAN." The CommerciGi does not
even deceive itself by a falsehood so glar-
ing and p~alpable as this. laiI"i
The civil war is the immediate and in
evitablc result Of the organization of the
Republican party and it was a result
%foreseen by the Republican leaders, and
produced purposely. with deliberation and
malice a~forethought. To say that they
did not know what they were doing, and
did not contemplate the necessary conse-
quences of their own acts, is to say that
they were fools. WAsmNGToN, in his
farewell address, had warned his country
men against the formation Of sectional par
ties. as the precursor Of sure destruction;
and every patriotic statesman, living or
dead; had repeated his admonition. The
Republican party was a sectional party.
dividing the people on a geographical
line, and was deliberately organized indie
fance Of the warnings of the patriot dead,
and the protests of the wisest and purest
of the living. 1t rendered Southern trea-
son easy and practicable; and the traitors
OF tho South, as the Republicans desired
and intended they should do, made haste
to avail themselves Of the opportunity.
The Republican party was not organic
ed until the conspiracy against the peace
and Union of the country was matured.
For twenty years, its leaders had been pre-
pairing the public mind for the catastro-
phes They had inculclated hatred be-
tween the sections, with a malice, a cum
ming and a ~criminality, which almost sur
pass belief. They had gradually progress
sed from vulgar and a~ggravating invec-
tive to overt acts. The enactments of
State laws, and the obligations or the
Constitution, were h~agrantly violated, even
when the crime of wilful perjury was sn-
peradded to legal infraction. The atrocious
Helper Book, endorsed by sixty-seven
members of Congress, speaking for and in
the name of the majority of Northern peo7
pie, was in itself hardly less than a decla-
ration Of war upon the South; and the in
cendiary, and most cruel, bloody, and
cAuseless conspiracy of JoHN BROWN sus-
tanned as he was by a vast array OF the
pu~blic,opinion of the North, was, far more
truly than the firing upon Sumter, the first
act in the horrid drama which the world
now beholds with shuddering and horror.
% Long before the beginning of the war,
the Republican leaders had made the Obli-
cations Of the Constitution hateful to the
majority Of the people /; and devotion to
the Union was the object of their scorn
and derision. Their treason lacked no ele-
ment of completeness. 1t was in their
words, and in their hearts, and in their
acts; and in the words. and hearts, and
acts of the majority of their followers.
And to men so criminal, to the masses so
deluded, and with minds SO perverted. the
transition to b~lood-spilling was so easy, so
natural, 50 inevitable, that it was not de-
layeda month alter they obtained the
power to initiate the horid work. Nothing
but blood would appease them, No ne
gotiation, no compromise, no settlement,
such as had often been made before-but
war-civil war-the most horrible and