The Evansville journal. [volume] (Evansville, Ind.) 1866-1870, 1866-09-25
Address OF the National Union Conn.,
mittee to the American People. -

FELLOW CITIZENS Very grave diff
ferences having arisen between your
immediate representatives in Con-
gress and the President who owes his
position to your votes, we are impel-
led to ask your attention thereto, and
to suggest the duties to your country
which they render imperative. 81
We shall avoid the use Of. hard
TaE9 ss ou 4 IaffRb.a Alb that Che matters a11
in issue may be brought within the
narrowest compass, let us first elimi-
nate from the controversy all that has
already been settled or has never been
In dispute.
The Republic has been desperstely
assailed from within, and its very ex-
istence seriously imperilled, Thirteen
States were ella med as having with.
drawn from the Union, and were
represented for years in a hostile
Congress meeting at Richmond. Ten
of these States were, fora time, wholly
In the power of hostile Confederacy;
the other three partially so. The un-
doubtedly loyal States were repeatedly
and formidably invaded by rebel ar
mics, which were only expelled after
obstinate and bloody battles Through
four years of arduous, desperate. civil
strife, the hosts of the rebel Con-
federacy withstood those Of the
Union. Agents of that Confed-,
eracy traversed the civilized world
seeking allies in their war against
the republic, and melting the ra-
pacious and unprincipfed to fit
out armed corsairs. to prey upon
her commerce. By State authori.
ty, and in the perverted names of
patriotism and loyalty, hundreds of
thousands of our countrymen were
conscripted into rebel armies and
made to fight desperately for our ma
tional disruption and ruin. And
though, by the blessing ef-God and
the yalor and constancy,of our loyal
people, the rebellion was finally and
utterly crushed, it did not succumb
until it had caused the destruction of
more than half million of prescious
human lives, not to speak of property
to the value of at least five billions of
dollars. g9.a et.3 f4.ln.ls
At length the rebel armies surren
dered, and the rebel power utterly
collapsed and vanished. What then?
The claim of the insurgents that
they either now reacquired or had
never forfeited their Constitutional
rights in the Union, including that of
representation in Congress, stands in
pointed antagonism alike to the re-
quirements Of Congress and to those
OF the acting President. 1t was the
Executive alone who, after the rebel
hon was no more, appointed Pro-
vlslonal Governors for the now sub
missiYe, unarned Southern States, ON
the assumption that the rebellion had
been revolutionary" and had de-
prlved the people under it's sway of
all civil government, and who required
the assembling of "a convention.
composed of delegates to be chosen by
that portion of the people of said
State who are loyal to the United
States, and no Others, for the purpose
OF altering and amending the Consti-
tuition OF said State" Itwas President
johnson who, SO late as October last
when all shadow of overtresistance to
the Union had long. since disappeared
insisted that it was not enough that
a State which had reyolted must rec
ognize her ordinance of secession as
null and void from the beginning. and
ratify the constitutional amendment
prohibiting Slavery evermore, but she