Gallipolis journal. [volume] (Gallipolis, Ohio) 1837-1919, 1865-08-24


tract.from the letter of Gen. j. D.
Cox, the Union Candidate for Coy
ernor of Ohio, in reply to the Oberlin
Committee. We would gladly pub
lish the whole of this valuable docu-
ment, if our space would admit of it.
The portion given, sets forth his
views on the negro question in q
PLAIN and concise manner The plan
may not at present be entirely prac.
ticable, but the appearance of things
in the South indicates an absolute
necessity for some measure of that
kind - - - -s------s-.S~s--l.--z.-=-z-
Just stepping as we are from the
battlefield on which descendants of
a common ancestry, so little removed
from us that we can literally reach
back our hands to grasp those of
our common sires, have waged the
most tremendous and terrible of
modern wars, it does not become us
TO argue that peaceful discussion will
quietly settle differences which in
former times were settled by the
sword; but the memory of the almost
present as well as of the remote past
calls upon US to build our polity sol
idly upon principles which expert
ence as well as reason prove to be
durable, and more than ever to avoid
deluding ourselves with the cry OF
"peace, peace, when there is no
peacef"
AS, during these weary years of
war, / have pondered this problem
IN the intervals of strife or by the
camp fire at night, l have been more
and more impelled to the belief that
the only basis of permanent nation
allty is to be found in complete ho-
mogeneity of people, of manners,
and of laws. The rapid fusion of
the races of western Europe as they
have met upon cur shores has Sc
cured the former of these requisites,
and the Yankee race, 1 adopt the
epithet as an honorable ont marked
as it is with salient char cteristics,
is go complete an amalgamation of
all families froth the eastern boun
Diary of Germany to the western
coast of Ireland, there are few of US
in whose veins are not mixed the
blood of several: But this unhappy
race of which we are speaking does
not amalgamate with the rest. 1t is
entirely immaterial to discuss why
it is so; the fact no one elm deny; nor
can it be denied that Its salvation or
its destruction will surely be worked
out in its family isolation. .T
Because there could be no real
unity of people between the Southern
whites and Southern blacks, it seems
manifest to me that there could be
no political unity, but rather strife
for the mastery, in which the one or
the other would go to the wall.
The struggle for supremacy would
be direct and immediate, and 1 see
no nope HudIcNcE Iudb Tue HcdhcE
race would not be reduced to hope
less subjection, or utterly destroyed.
There is no reason to suppose that
Missouri border -ruffanism could new
er be repeated on new fields, and the
strife once inaugurated, the merci-
less war would continue as long as
the obnoxious race had an existence.
You have expressed your anticipa-
ton of such result in one state of
the case, how is it that you do not
see that direct struggle for power
at the ballot-box would make the
contest more deadly?
1 hold that there is great philoso
phic truth in the words of Guizot, in
summing up the eight centuries of
bloodshed out of which the French
emerged into nationality from the
strife Of petty races and tribes. He