The Democratic advocate. [volume] (Westminster, Md.) 1865-1972, 1866-06-21
MAKING TREASON ODTOUs.

TREASON ODTOUS.
The Radicals are always harping
about making Treason odious; but,
like everything else they undertake,
they begin wrong end foremost. It is
with them, as with those who are given
up to blindness of mind and hardness of
heart, so that they would hardly be con-
WINGED though an angel of light should
proclaim to them the truth.
Their favorite mode is to visit the
whole people of the South with still
greater punishment to demand that
more blood shall be shed, and that Jeff.
Davis, Gen. Lee, and other Southern
leaders, not more guilty than multitudes
of other Southern people, should be
given up as victims to satisfy the pub
lie cry for vengeance. They have not
yet learned the lesson of all history
that athe blood of the martyrs is the
seed of the church )" and that thesurest
way to keep alive the spirit of resistance
in people who are struggling for free
dom and independence is to treat them
with undue severity. Isl
They do not stop to ask themselves
whether their party were to blame or
not in provoking the South to rebellion.
They do not seem to know that if the
North had not attempted, both in Church
and State, to compel the South to their
views on the question of slavery; and
that if they had not conspired to array
the stronger vote of the North against
the South, in order to force the will of
their section upon reluctant South, the
latter would never have reyolted, and
we would have had no war, no traitors
now to punish nor treason to make obi
GUS. In fact by their sectional policy,
SO foreign to the free principles upon
which our government was founded, by
their deliberate attempt to monopolise
for the North all the powers of the gen
eral government, they seemed to intend
to provoke the South into rebellion, and
instead of making treason odious, to
make it honorable. Even if the South
did strike rashly, and prematuaely, it
i'll becomes those who VIGOROUSLY
helped to get them into false position,
to clamor now for more of their best
blood, and to desire to add still more to
their misfortunes. @
The only way to make treason odious
in this country would be for the Gov
eminent, and the political party which
controls it for the time, to see that its
blessings descend equally on all like the
dews of Heaven; that the rights of all
its citizens are properly cared for and
respected; and that no sectional or IA
natical parties are allowed to array the
stronger section against the rights and
interests of the weaker. To rebel
against such government (Which is
inconceivable) would be treason of the
deepest dye, and worthy of the worlds
condemnation. Even then it would not
need the Infamous death punishment to
make it odious. But, under the pecu-
liar circumstances of the present case, it
is all folly to attempt to make it odious
in the eyes of the people, or of the
world by any severity of punishment.
The only way the South may be made
to see their fault in an odious light, is
by the exercise of a noble generosity,
which acknowledges our own share of
the great wrong, and invites them to
yield to our friendly advances what
their self respect might prompt them to
reject when offered in any other way
This is the only possible way to make
treason in the South odious but we
candidly think that it never will be done
until the present Congress, and the Re-
publican party, are displaced from
power. @
-<sA~S------ 1855.