The Wheeling daily register. [volume] (Wheeling, W. Va.) 1864-1878, 1866-10-03
Peace or War.

i
poured out blood, and expended treasure
without stint, for the sake of perpetu
ating the military reign of North ovel
South9 Was it to destroy self govern
ment and overthrow the foundations o
the Union that the war was carried Oh
| So the radicals would have us believe
Neither before the war, nor during the
war, nor since the war, has there been
time when the Northern States had any
right to prescribe civil law in the South
ern States; nor can it be done now with
out destroying the whole fabric OF the
American Union. What business have
We with Southern local law to-day
"We have conquered them" says rAdi'
cal, 'and therefore we have a right to
prescribe what social laws we please
Nonsense! We have conquered our,
selves. We have suppressed an insur'
reetion in our own body politic. We
have extirpated disease which took
possession of one of our own organs OF
life. We shouted till we were hoarse
that the war was "for the life of the
nation" Let Us have done with this
sectionalism, then, and RENE ember that
the United States form one grand body
to which each part Is necessary and
In which each part has equal ghts.
The administering of local law to
the South. as a conquered territory, i'm
plies right in the majority of the States
TO make laws for the minority. So long
as military law was administered there
was no such implication, but this busi'
ness of prescribing civil and social law
is like poisoning oue's own arm with the
idea that the poison can be confined to
that locality. Tue veins aud arteries
run through the whole system. The
wrong is done to the whole constitution
by an outrage on one part of the body,
aud the whols body will suffer for the
! wrong. We have No right, either by
law or uquest, nor on moral principles,
TO treat the Southern States as conquered
territories or populations. We may ad-
minister the law to individuals as So
verify as we please. We may punish
men and women and children. But the
United States Government mig hit as we'll
repeal the charters of New Orleans, Mo-
bile, and Charleston and wipe them out
as cities in the South, as to declare q
Southren State dead or not member of
the Union. The moral right, the legal
right, the constitutional right is just the
same in both cases.
But" says sincere radical, "have
we not the right to refuse them admis.
sion to the Union unless they adopt such
laws and social principles as we think
correcs (" No, you have no such right
under the Constitution and laws of our
land, nor hare you The moral right unless
you qiUe them at the same time the right Of
accepting or rejecting yOnr terms Of union
Tho grand wrong. bhs Outrage 20 AnaAri.
can principles, the rotten timber which
men are now UpSWsea 80 farning into the
Constitution itself, is this plan of hold
ing State by the throat and declaring
that it shall not come into your Union
not to be protected by your Constitu'
ton, unless it will agree with you 10
alter that Constitution and submit to
amendments of your proposiDgi bat
when the State asks, Will you let me
stay out of the Union if / don't like yoar
new proposals ?" the answer is fierce
NO. This is hideous burlesque on the
old idea of free American Union. The
vanity Of Union thus constructed is
but too plain. 1t has not the consisten-
CT Of summer morning cloud. 1t will
not have strength to endure through a
generation of.politioians. 1t can only be
perpetual civil war: Was 1t for this
we fought ',-Jounal Of Commerce.