The weekly North-Carolina standard. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 186?-1869, 1866-08-29

Southern States, where different races and
interests are brought most closely in contact,
and where passions and resentments are al
ways most easily fec and famed into out
break and even there they are quite as much
the fruit of untimely and hurtful political
agitation as of any hostility on the part of
the people to the authority of the National
Government.
But the concurrent testimony of those best
acquainted with the condition of society and
the state of public sentiment in the South
including that of its representatives in this
Conventions establishes the fact that the
great mass of the Southern people accept
with as full and sincere submission as do the
people of the other States, the re-established
supremacy of the national authority, and are
prepared, in the most loyal spirit, and with
a zeal quickened alike by their interest and
their pride, to cooperate with other States
and sections in whatever may be necessary to
defend the rights, maintain the honor and
promote the welfare of our common coun-
try. History affords no instance where o
people, SO powerful in numbers, in resources
and in public spirit, after war so long in
its duration, so destructive in its progress,
and so adverse in Its ISSUE have accepted
defeat and its consequences with so much of
good faith as has marked the conduct of the
people lately in instruction against the Uni
ted States. Beyond all question this has
been largely due to the wise generosity with
which their enforced surrender was accepted
by the President of the United States and
the Generals in immediate command of their
armies, and to the liberal measures which
were afterward taken to restore order, tran
guilty and law to the States where all had
for the time been overthrown. No steps
could have been better calculated to COM
mand the respect, win the confidence, revive
the patriotism and secure the permanent and
affectionate allegiance of the people of the
South to the Constitution and laws of the
Union than those which have been so firmly
taken and SO steadfastly pursued by the
President of the United States. And if that
confidence and loyalty have been since i'm
paired ; if the people of the South are to-day
less cordial in their allegiance than they were
Immediately upon the close of the war, we
believe it is due to the changed tone of the
Legislative Department of the General Gov
eminent toward them; to the action by which
Congress has endeavored to supplant and
defeat the Presidents wise and benificent
policy of restoration; to their exclusion from
all participation in our common Government;
to the withdrawal from them of rights con-
ferred and guaranteed by the Constitution,
and to the evident purpose of Congress, in
the exercise of usurped and unlawful au-
thority, to reduce them from the rank of free
and equal members of Republic of States,
with rights and dignities unimpaired, to the
condition of conquered provinces and
conquered people, in all things subordinate
and subject to the will Of their conquerors
free only to obey laws in making which they
are not allowed to share.
No people has ever yet existed whose
loyalty and faith such treatment long con-
tinued would not ALLEVIATE and impair. And
the ten millions of Americans who live in
the South would be unworthy citizens of a
free country, degenerate sons of an heroic
ancestory, unfit ever to become guardians of
the rights and liberties bequeathed to US by
the fathers and founders of this republic, if
they could accept, with accomplishing sub
missiveness, the humiliations thus sought to
be imposed upon them. Resentment of in
justice is always and everywhere essential to
freedom; and the spirit which prompts the
States and people lately in instruction, but
insurgent now no longer, to protest against
ditions, makes them all the more worthy to
| share in the government of free common
|. wealth, and gives still frmer assurance Of the
future power and freedom of the Republic
For whatever responsibility the Southern
people may have incurred in resisting the
authority of the National Government and
in taking up arms for its overthrow, they
may be held to answer, as individuals, be-
{h,, fr,l l., &c %lo
for that conduct as societies and organized
communities, they have already paid the
most fearful penalties that can fall on offend
ing States in the losses, the suferings and
humiliations of unsuccessful war. But what
ever may be the guilt or the punishment of
the conscious authors of the instruction,
candor and common justice demand the
concession that the great mass of those who
became involved in its responsibility acted
upon what they believed to be their duty, in
defence of what they had been taught to be-
lieve their rights, or under compulsion,
physical and moral, which they were power
less to resist Nor can it be amiss to remem-
Der that terrible as have been the bereave-
ments and the losses of this war, they have
fallen exclusively upon neither section and
upon neither party-that they have fallen
indeed, with far greater weight upon those
with whom the war began :; that in the death
of relatives and friends, the dispersion of
families. the disruption Of social systems and
social ties, the overthrow of governments, of
law and order, the destruction of property
and of forms and modes and means of in
| dustry, the loss of political, commercial and
| moral influence, in every shape and form
| which great calamities can assume, the
States and people which engaged in the war
against the Government of the United States
have suffered tenfold more than those who
remained in allegiance to its Constitution
and laws.
These considerations may not, as they GER
tainly do not, justify the action of the peo-
| pie of the insurgent States; but no just or
generous mind will refuse to them very con-
siderable weight in determining the line Of
conduct which the Government of the Uni
ted States should pursue toward them.
They accept. if not with alacrity, certainly
without sullen resentment; the defeat and
overthrow they have sustained. They ac-
knowledge and acquiesce in the results, to
! themselves and. the country, which that de
feat involves. Theyao longer claim for any
State the right to secede from the Union
they no longer assert for any State the allie
glance paramount to that which is due to
the General Government They have ac-
cepted the destruction of slavery, abolished
| it by their State constitutions, and concuned
with the States and people Of the whole
Union in prohibiting its existence forever
upon the soil or within the Jurisdiction of
the United States. They indicate and evince
their purpose, just SO fast as may be possible
and safe, to adapt their domestic laws to the
changed condition of their society, and to
secure by the law and its tribunals equal and
impartial justice to all classes of their in
habitants. They admit the invalidity of all
acts of resistance to the national authority,