Wilmington journal. [volume] (Wilmington, N.C.) 1844-1895, 1866-09-27
The Address to the Country.

The Soldiers Convention at Cleveland
adjourned sine die, on Tuesday, amid scenes
of great enthusiasm. The following is the
address adopted. We have already pub
ished the platform.
More than fifteen months have elapsed since you
released from service and permitted to return
to your homes, with the assurance of the country
that your work was done and that the rebellion
substantially suppressed. For four years, on
the ocean and in fields stretching from Gettps-
burg to New Orleans, you bad fought in order to
restore the integrity of the nation and you rested
from your tolls with the conviction that it only
mained for statesmen to rivet the broken bands
which you had laid together. You knew that this
task required wisdom and deliberation, but you
had right to expect that, like your own, it would
be taken up promptly and conducted with sin
gleuess of purpose. You had yourselves left party
ties behind when you marched to the field and
thenceforth knew only your country You had a
right to demand that in the peaceful completion OF
your work they would fellow your example. You
expected that those who had called upon you to
suppress not only revolution, but the spirit OF
revolution and to vindicate the violated law,
would set new example to the nation by a strict
adherence to their constitutional power and re-
viz al of the old spirit of sacred obedience to law
You expected and after the performance of such
services, you had peculiar right to demand that
your successors in the work of restoration should
not only devise measures which should be Just,
but should propose them at season when they
should be practicable and that by means OF these
measures and the sympathles OF the North, the
people of the South, subjected to all the penalties,
should long since have been brought back to the
performance of all it's duties in this nation and
which the vindication of the law demanded to real
participation in its life. For more than Year YOU
have looked on in silence, and the work for which
you provided the opportunity has not been done.
Your successors have acted neither wisely nor in
season. That which might have been well and
wisely accomplished, if proposed at the proper
time has been made lmpracticable by delay, and a
condition which it would have been of doubtful
wisdom to impose at any time is at last imposed
when it is too late. After you had been withdrawn
from the field because you had annihilated the pow
er of your opponents to disobey their government
entire year was added to their already long es-
arrangement from it before any conditions of return
were offered to them and when these conditions
were at last announced they contained terms
which proposed to make the estrangement of a
large portion Of our population perpetual The
youth of the South, who had novpr known when
the rebellion commenced, or what it Was to share
in the duties and business of national citizens,
have grown 10 manhood and influence in it's affairs,
and still are strangers i'll their land and excu-
ded from the instruction which might make them
patriots. The uuion of these States, for which
these partizans deemed your lives not too great a
price, Is yet as incomplete as when you marched
home and by their measures its restoration is still
indefinitely postponed. They say to you, if our
terms are not accepted by the South, we can wait.
1t becomes, therefore, your peculiar duty, since
YOU prepared the ground for this final work to in
whether it Is wise or safe to wait. Meantime,
whether you determine TO wait or move, it is in
dispensible first to enrich yourselves in position
of impregnable facts. The power OF the national
government over the affairs of its insurgent cit-
zens, except for purposes uf judicial punishment,
is purely OF beidgerent character, and its b~lig
erent right concerning them is included ill., whileit
is also limited by one of the grauts of the consti
tuition. The government is authorized to suppress
insurrectlon by military means, and these include
all belligerenL functions and capaciti, which may
be necessary for that end In the exercise of it's
necessary belgerent right it is as competent TO
require of its insurgent citizens it would be to
require of foreign enemy not only the lay ing
down Of arms, but the surrender of every position
which threatened a renewal Of the conflict
The right is perfect and complete for it's urpose,
but it is limited by its purpose. The constit ution
directs that armies and beligerent law shall be
used for the suppression of lnsurrection. With
this complete suppression, which includes the pre-
venton of renewal, the legitimate application of
compulsion to their future course as communities
must cease 1t is not true thai in case OF war this
government acquires all of the belligerent rights
known to Internationallaw. 1t is only SO much of
that kind OF right over its people 1t finds
bodied In its own constitution. 1t derives from
this source so much is necessary in suppressing
lnsurrection, and this does not include the right
to take and hold its rebellous citizens and their
territory as a conquest 1t is authorized to em-
poy war to vindicate it's old title to allegiance not
to acquire new one.
In accordance With this rule the President. as