Western Reserve chronicle. [volume] (Warren, Ohio) 1855-1921, 1866-08-29
WHOLE NO. 26O4

maps geu6IdiAyB aNOWlu8 bnaJ hostility
These same men, at the first of 1861. did
not generally ayow such hostility. Such
avowals then, as now, were not polite
Let me beg you, my cOuntrymen, to 90
with me moment into the company of
the witnesses -ghastly and hdeious-
which come in troops to tell us that these
people remain intensely disloyal. 1 re-
view these facts not to excite alarm
not to perpetuate resentments-not to
keep alive alineations. / profoundly
wish that it were safe to bury all distrusts
forever. But it is not safe, and in appeal
ing to these facts 1 invoke the merest in
stinet Of lf-preserVation-that which
the poor worm will Involuntarily use.
SOUTHERN DIsLoYALTY AS SHOWN IN NoN-Po-
LITIcAL ACTION.
| Let me first allude to that part of this
combination which is in the rebel States
l must be brief in recitals which if full
would be endless. The great and over
shadowing proof of the disloyalty, the one
which, in its conclusiVeness, arises high
above all the rest, is the fact that this
entire people waged against their Govern
ment a war to destroy it. The appealing
events of the warts causeless origin
| its strange cruelties-the hendish malig-
nifty of its prosecution-the four years of
its resembles struggle for the destruction
of the nation, and the sullen and unyield-
ing spirit in which the rebellion received
its crushing defeat, are all too fresh in
the agonized heart of the nation to per-
NIT their force being heightened by any
recital of which speech IS capable. As a
crime against Liberty this peoples rebell-
ion stands in history unmatched. As
conspiracy against republican govern
ment, continued through thirty years, it
is wholly without parallel or proximate.
As a treason against all free government,
its wickedness is wholly unapproaehable.
To erect an empire of slavery upon its
countrv's ruin, it laughed to seorn all the
restraints of religion, humanity, govern
ment and law. 1t took command in our
army, so that it might betray and surren-
der them. 1t accepted of its Govern.
ment nurture so that it might fatally stab
the breast from which the nurture was
drawn. 1t grasped the positions of Min
isters of State, that the powers these
gave might insure to them ability at a
blow to destroy the State. They obtain
ed elections to the Congress to the end
that in the Congress they might cut off
from the nation all means of life. They
took the oaths to support the Constitu-
to destroy it; and, in the nations coun-
ell chambers, when they swore to study
the nations safety, they literally inYen-
ted and sent out the plans for its death,
and when gone from thence they went to
their thoroughly meditated work with
the purposes and implements of deVas-
tstion and cruelty such as no treason ever
had before In garb of friends their
agents went on the boats of your lakes
and rivers, killed their defenselesSi pass
-engers and burned them up. In. every
country of Christendom where they were
permitted, they manned and fitted pi-
rates which lighted the seas with your
burning commerce, Their spies were
concealed in your houses, to murder your
women and children with poison and
plague, and torch and knife and pistol,
and with arranged plans for the starva-
ton of the prisoners of war. They exc
cuted more of the piraeies, murders and
assassinations against your people than
ever blackened before the chronicles of
barbaFian's or tyrant's wars. The very
land was filed with living skeletons, vic
tins of their refined methods of starVa-
ton, and sixty thousand of the victims
are dead. Their mountains became prsg-
nant with the hunted patriots-men, wo-
men and children, who escaped from
their relentless fury to the befriending
darkness of dens and caves. Their butch
cries, when put together in one fearful
aggregate, count up THREE HUNDRED THOU
SAND! But quit the CHASTITY recital
Men turn from the story of this monster
treason, this stupenduous wiekedness,
with new ideas of the poverty of speech,
and appalled, by their proximity to THE
CRIME OF HISTORY. And to-day, scarcely
sixteen moons removed from that crimes
fitting end, when they killed off the
President of the United States, we are
here tasking our logic to show that the
authors of the crime are not, by pre-emi-
nence, the patriots of the land, to whom
il is safe and fit to surrender the Gov
ernment without conditions ;" wrestling
it, for the purpose of the surrender, from
them who defeated the treason.
POLITICAL INDICATION OF DIsLoYALTY.
Let us look moment at the political
action of these States, which is to furnish
evidence s1beyond any doubt" of sincere
LOYALTY. I again can refer to but a small
part of this evidence. 1st. In not one
State of the rebellion have these rebel
leaders submitted to a vote of the people,
either the Constitution, or any amend
ment of the Constitution Of thei, new
State Government for which they de-
mand the representation, governing pow
ers and Federal guarantees which are due
to republican and loyal States; and not
one of these pretended Constitutions or
amendments has ever been voted on or
approved by the people. I'd. All of the
so called legislation of State Conventions
and Legislatures has been under military
dictatiCu. Sd. In those States which
professed to adopt the anti-slayery
amendment to the Constitution of the
United States, it is very clear that it was
done with reluctance and under military
guidance. 4th. One of these Conven-
tions rs. C.'sl was dissolved as a revolu-
tionary body by Governor Perry, and this
is the body which made the new State
Government, and which districted the
State for Congressional Representatives.
5th. Hardly had the war closed before
these States "eame forward and haughti-
ly claimed as right the privilege of
partaking at once in that Government
which they had been fighting four years
to overthrow" and at once, and before
they had any Governor to issue Writs of
election under the State laws, they pro-
ceeded to elect to Congress, and to the
other offices, their leading, unpardoned
and unrepentant rebels, excluding with
contempt, those who had manifested an
alta atehment to the Union, and this too
in defiance of an act of Congress render
ing such rebels wholly incapable of hold
ing the offices to which they were elect
ed. From Georgia they elected to the
United States Senate Stephens, the Vice
President of the rebellion, and johnson,
a Senator in the rebel Congress; and to
the House of Representatives they elect
ed Cook and Wolford, who were Generals
in the rebel army. From North Carolina
they elected to the United States Senate
VIM. A. Graham, who was Senator in
the rebel Congress, and Pool, who was in
the rebel Senate of North Carolina, and
to the House of Representatives elected
Fuller from the rebel Congress, and Tur-
Il =