, 1864-08-26


Senator Henderson, of Missouri, one of the
most moderate of the Republican leaders, deliv-
cred speech the other day in his place in the
Senate, in which he said: lo I9v0-
There are but two sides to the question. The
one is Union without slavery, the other is the
immediate and unconditional acknowledgement
of the Southern Confederacy. l..l
Therefore let the elements of opposition at
once combine SO that the friends of the Union
may determine upon the best course to secure
peace. Ifthose elements are too strong to be
subdued except at the expense of our own liber-
ties and the loss of every good for which the
government was established, the sooner we know
the fact and act upon it the better
fit become evident that the friends of slave
ry are strong enough in this country to resist
all efforts to subdue them, shall act upon it,
| am not prepared to ruin the country in vain
effort to do what cannot be done. Shall this
war be carried on for ever? Is the common cry of
% the last man and the last dollar" poetry, pa
triotism or bragadocia? Should the war go on
until the public debt equals the entire wealth of
the country? Should the whole capital of the
people be forced into Federal securities, and
these securities made the basis of an irredeema-
BILE paper circulation? Should it go on until
misery broods over the whole land; until civil
authorities shall become impotent, and all rights
Of person and property stand at the mercy of
military power .
Should it go on until the members of the SEN
ate and House of Representatives shall owe
their places here to the bayonet instead of the
ballot box; until they will be as contemplate as
the Rump Parliment that long enacted the
military usurpation to the overthrow of the Eng
lish Constitution, to be finally expelled from
place by the power they had so basey served2
Should it go on until corruption and fraud, the
necessary concomtants of civil war, shall have
crept into high places and put on the garb of pa
triotism until officers become so numerous that
official patronage may quarter one half of the
people upon the other half and give them the
means of perpetuatng their own power? Should
it continue until exhausted the nation would
welcome the coming of Cromwell or Bona
partej until rovost-Marshals with military po-
lice shall be stationed at every village in the
Northern States, displacing the civil authority
issuing orders for governing people heretofore
supposed to be able to govern themselves, teach
ing how God shall be wOrshipped, prescribing
new and strange offenses and furnishing them
by court-martal? Should it continue until
financial ruin brings misery, and misery rushes
into anarchy, when no hope but despotism is
left2 H'
Mr. President, few years more civil war and
the outline of this picture will be seen. 1t can
not be otherwise. 1t is the necessary result of
a long civil strife. Peaceparties will spring up ;
the war party will denounce them as traitors;
the publication of newspapers win be sup
pressed and freedom of speech denied; mobs
will retaliate; the blunders as well as the cor
ruptiOns of the war party will tend to strength
en- the convictions of the peace party the period
being one of violence, each party appeals to VI
olence, the one to hold the other to obtain pow
er; the ballot-box becomes mockery, cheat
instead Of proclaimlng the voice Of fcee people