Des Arc citizen., 1866-05-19
THE TERM "REBEL.,

The mtsapplication Of this term to the peo- pie of the South, by Northern men and the federal authorities, is thus treated by the Hon. Charles Gayarre, of New Orleans, in recent speech delivered by him in that city:
 will avail myself of this opportunity to say that if we are called rebels, we ought not to subscribe to the appellation. hope that it is not inconsistent with the new allegiance to which we have consented, to remark that the late war was not rebellion, in the ordI- nary sense of the word. The world had heard before of the rebellion of subjects against their governments, of provinces against the empire of which they were n part, or colonles against their metropolis. of the yanquished against the conqueror, but never of the rebel lion of sovereign and independent States against the confederacy which they had crea- ted. This is something new under the sun, to which our minds cannot be easily recon cled Besides as republicans of the old, ifnot the black school, as democrats VIC may be per- mitted to have some repugnance for the use of q word which we shall prove to be of monarch ical origin.
 Let us go back to the first republics of which we have any history--to the republics of Greece. They had also their intestine dssen- sions. One party would seize power and drive it's opponents into exile, or put them to death and confscatc their property. We find them
 
 emy, parricide, etc., but rebel, never. Be- tween Greek and Greek there could be treason and enmity, but no rebellion. Rebellion inn plies inferiority on one side, and sovereignty on the other--which could not be among the Greeks, us they were all equals and sovereigns. It was the same with Rome In the whole history of the Roman republics the word rebel is not once applied to Roman citizen, When the first secession of which we have any knowledge took place among them, when the people--the plebians--seceded from the pa- tricians and retired to Mount ,Arentinc, they l were not called rebels When Coriolanus put himself at the head of the Volsci and marched against Rome, he was not outlawed as rebel by the Roman senate. They denounced him merely as an enemy.
 When he appeared before the walls of his native city, which he had doomed to destruc-
 tion, when he had scornfully rejected the sup plcation of his patrician friends, and the submission of the repentant plebians who had offended him. when he had treated in the same contemptuous manner the majesty of the gsds represented by the priests and by the yestals there came his mother. We have on record the speech which she addressed to him. She calls him hostis--enemy; she calls him parricide but rebel, never; and the Ro- man matrons, when he died, went into mourning for whole year. In the protract- ed struggles between Marius and Sylla, so celebrated for their tables of reciprocal pro-. seription, the party who happened torepre- sent the government for the time being, never dreamed that their opponents were rebels. Cicero cxhausts against Catiline the yocabula- ry of epithets, but omits the word rebel which is not even found in any of his many works. When Caesar crossed the Rubicon the Ro- man senate declared that there was not rebel Eon hutf in The fact is, that according to Roman ideas, a Roman could not be Q rebel. He could be guilty of seditio, tamultus, insurrectio, but to rebetlao. Romans were all equals. They did not owe allegiance to each other. There was no re- bellon between Cassius and Brutus on the one side, and Mark Antony and Octavius on the other, nor subsequently, between Octavius and | Antony. and when Octavius had become Au- gustus, the conspiracy of Cinna against the l undisputed master of the world, if it had ri pened into an open conflict of arms, would not have been deemed q rebellion, because respect for old republican ideas and forms was
 not yet entirely oblterated "Rebelbo," :" | among the Romans, was where those who had | been overcome in battle, and yielded to their l subection, made a second resistance. (See Encyclopedia Britannica) The Gauls, the
 Spaniards, the Britons and other conquered nations could be rebelious against Rome, but | not the Romans.
 All the Romans thought that they were l component parts of their government. That l government could be divided into hostile frag
 ments but it was not understood in those
 days how a fraction of sovereignty could be
 rebellious against the other fractions. We
 hear of rebellious sons, because of the natural
 allegiance claimed by father; but we never | heard of rebellious brothers. The Italian re-
 publics of the medieval ages were as sparing l of the word rebel as their illustrious predeA 1 cessors We'll! When the Greeks could not
 be rebels against the Greeks, Romans against l Romans, Italians against Italians, we have precedents for saying that Americans pitted | against Americans should not be so fond of
 stigmatizing their brothers as rebels. Of
 course, do not mean to maintain that, legal
 ly speaking, Americans, in their individuality I cannot be rebels under our institutions, and
 ought not to be proclaimed and treated as | such on proper occasions.