New Orleans daily crescent. [volume] ([New Orleans, La.]) 1851-1866, 1866-04-14
SATURDAY MORNING, APRIL IA, 1866.
oBsDIENcE TO FEDERAL AUTHORITY.

Since the cessation of hostities in June, e5,
the officers and soldiers of the Confederate armies
and all classes of the citizens of the seeded
States, have submitted without complaint to the
authority Of the Federal government. Our mill
tary organizations were promptly dsbanded, as
soon as the formal surrender of the Confederate
Generals, east and west of the Mississippi, was
announced. With equal promptitude, the judicial,
legislative and executive functonaries of the local.
State and Confederate governments ceased to ex-
ercise official duties. No effort was made by either
military or civil officers to retain their authority,
and all returned to their various private pursuits.
For more than nine months a profound peace and
quetude have prevailed, not interrupted even by
the occasional abuses of authority on the part of
military or other officers of the United States. Our
people have frankly accepted the Providential dis
pensation, and after the failure of their vigorous
attempt to maintain separate political existence,
they yield to the controlling force which compels
them to recognize and obey an authority which
they had resisted at so much cost.
As the suffering, vigor and herosm Of the South
ern people, while contending for a separate ma
tionaty, have no equal in the history of revolu-
tions, so their ready and universal spirit of obe-
dience to the laws of the conquering government
ANY officer appointed by the President of the
United States would not have met with the least
opposition in executing any law or in exercising
any legal authority, in any part of the South for
| the last nine months, without single soldier at
| his command. n. --a-
| Yet the spirit of obedience is not to be under
stood in the sense Of welcome submission. Our
people do not stultfy themselves by pretending to
! Al, Fo,i FaaI ny
fegn any special love for the people Of the NORTH
or for the government controlled by them. And
when they speak of their loyalty and allegiance te
| the Federal government they do not mean the
fal affection and devotion Of children and subjects
4 towards father or a reYered sovereign. All tina
wise men of the North can effect, and all tba
honest and candid men of the South can promise
is obedience to the iaws-steady, settled. continued
obedience. They would be hypocrites if pretend
ing to love those so lately their armed enemies, o.
to entertain affection for the government foFcet
upon them against their wills and in spite of thei
vigorous resistance. The Southern people wer'
wont, in former times, to hold first in reverence
and love the government of their RESPECTIVE
States, and to extend to that Of the Federal UnoI
all that was necessary in respect and obedience
they will continue to love and cherish their loca
governments as foremost in their affections, bu
"give unto Caesar the things that are Casar's.
The people of the South entertained reasonabl
pride in the national prosperity and Of that patr
otsm which prompted resistance to aggression an
; rejoiced in the triumphs of American genius
prowess or enterprise, they had about as much a
the people of the North could claim
Can the feeling of the early days of the republi
be restored? Will the people of all sections eve
again be brought to contide in a Federal authorlt
strictly, mpartiay and justly administered-in
Constitution that shall protect mnorties and defen
local governments from Infringement leg
lators and executive officers who shall labor wisel
and honestly for the general good? Between sue
confidence and what we have frankly stated as th
present sentiment of the people of the South ther
: is wide sepafaton. The dominant sectional m;
jority must show very different temper from tht
now exhibited, before the spirit of by-gone day
viii begin to revive. That spirit is waning in the
own section under the malign auspices of partisa
tyranny, and the tone of the Northern mind is nj
buoyant and hopeful.