Western Reserve chronicle. [volume] (Warren, Ohio) 1855-1921, 1867-09-11
WHOLE NO. 1858.


President, utterly causeiess, unjust and
monstrous, and was an attempt % over
throw the best government ever existing
among men; that the rebsls made the
war was eauselessly,in order to establish
new government upon the ruins Of the
old, in which slavery was to be the cor
ner-stone; that every means Of averting
the war had been resorted TO- and had .t
been BY the traitors rejected with ScorD; -a7.t
that we had even offered TO make slavery
eternal and incapable Of being abolished
by amendment Of the Constitution; that
in Its prosecution they destroyed our psos
pie by every means Of assassination and
cruelty which hellish ingenuity co1ld con-
trive and they put 10 death sixty thousand
Of our sons and brothers, all in contempt
of the rules OF international law and OF
humanity; that for the wars support they
repudiated and eonfseated all claims and
property belonging to loyal citizen; that
to defend and preserve the nations life
against this most huge and hendish at
tack, the nation was compelled to send in
to the field nearly two millions Of its
children, of whom near half million they
murdered; that they made this war coFt
you three thousand millions of dollars, a.
and filed your country with the widows
and fatheriess, to be the -pensiOned wards
of the government for life; that not Feb-
/ ell army WIS ever disbanded, nor gun laid
down, nor fort or field surrendered exesPt
when these were force8 from RELENTLESS
traitors in crushing defeat.
WANT OF LOYALTY AFTER THE WAR
Next look at the state of their loyalty
at the time they demanded power. Into
4 that question the country and Congress Il.
looked with athoroughness and care un-
precedented. To decide whether the
traitor had repented of his crime, and
had abandoned the doctrine of secession &.
and would not again attempt the destrue-
ton Of the nation if permitted to rule, you
exhausted every possible means of infor- 1.1
nation. You appointed for that investi-
CATION from Congress- and heard thou b.
sands of witnesses on oath both rebel and
lloyal. You heard the utterances Of their
politicians. and orators You read the srs
i traitOrous declarations of their press
You saw their rebel flag displayed in all
Public professions IN alI their civil dis
plays. You heard the rebel songs IN their
theaters and other amHsements. You saw
all their honors laYished upon their rebel
dead. You saw every known loYalist a.
sassinated or driven from their country
unless protected by orr army. You saw
them select for their State officers only
the most eminent OF their .ra itors- You
saw them, by carefully pre-arrsngsd plans
OF murder, commence, and as far as they
could, execute the work Of assassinating
every loyal man in their eommunites, Of
amples. You saw them las at New Or, ..,5a
leans make service in the rebel army a
condition precedent to being appointed to
| any Office You heard no one Of their 1 CT
| millions express any sorrow for his part 70
in the rebellion, or any abandonment Of -
the claimed right to destroy the Union
| by secession. And then when their last 1laa.
ally, johnson, notified them that they
should elect members TO Congress, you
saw them elect-in defiance Of the laws of
i Congress which prohibited from holding '-i'
Office men wholcould not truly make oath s7ar
! that they had not engaged in the rebellion
the very leaders of the rebellion, they
sent to our Senate, Stephens, the Vice iA
| President Of the rebellion, and johnson r
and Graham and Fuller and Furrow and
Foster and HsTrlson-the men who in the
rebel Congress made their Andersonvilles.
They sent to your Congress Cook and
Wolford and Turner and Manning and
Kennedy and McGown and Battle and
Alcomb and Reynolds and Pison-all OH
Gers in the rebel armies, who came 70 u
while their garments were yet smeared
with blood Of our patriotic dead, and their
faces were begrimmed with the smoke Of
battle, and demanded TO be instantly ad-i -f
mitted to rule our Government. They
hare not got IN yeti ---s...
WHAT WAS FOUND TO BE TIE STATE OF
LOYALTY.
Ay such methods as these, and such
proofs as these, the Congress Of the Uni- .aal
ted States found the fact Of therenaining --
hostility to our government 70 be aerce,
unrelenting and universal. They ex-
pressed that finding in these words: aThe o-a
evidence of an intense hostility 70 the 81
Federal Union, and an equally intense
love for the late Confedracy nurtured By
the war; is decisive" Such was the state
of this reyolted people at the time when
their Vice President made, to the country, 49,
and touching these rebels, the startling
declaration that can through the war
they had the right to come back and as. 5aos
sist in the legislation of the country
Such was their condition when Mr.. John
son repeated the same thing 20 myself,
and such it was when Mr.. Ewing repeat % ~
ed, what every Democratic press on the g.-r
continent has indorsed, that seven in the
heat and violence of the rebellion, the
States in which rebel violence most pre- aaF--
vailed, were each and all Of them, as
States. entitled 10 their representation IN
the two houses Of Congress-"
THE LOYAL RACE.
These things kept in mind, let me re-
mind you Of smother strange element Of
our situation at the moment when Con
gress came to decide what should be the
powers of these rebel States. Whilst, as
have said, nearly every white man in
L1eSe oLateS became, aud 70 tue wars tar
mination was. and still is, your eountrys
implaesbls foe, and to it traitor, nearly
every black man was, all through the war
and at its end, your eountryis friend
True, they were q race of the poor. They
were so because for centuries their unre-
Quilted toll had made, fer one half of your
country, its farms, its cities It's roads, its s-r
implements Of husbandry, its ships, its
richest commerce and its homes. An en-
pire Of wealth, in extent vast as Europe,
and in value great as tbs Indies, had been
Wrung from them under the hard law of 60
slavery. The birth Of this races children
was tolerated il it promised the owner
gold. Their nurtare wss endured Whenit
promised gold. Their marriage relations
began and ended As they promised to pro-
duee gold. Their souls were admitted to
or shut out from ''the Light Of Life" ae-
cordingiy IS one or he other promised
gold Their virtue or is opposite was
compelled as the one or theother promised
gold. They and heir children were per
mltted to survive or were pns 10 death as
the one CT the other offered gold. But
whatever else might be allotted 70 them,
from generation to generation, gold was
the inexorable end forced BY the lash from
the quivering flesh of the old and the
young, the strong and the infrm, the
male and the femalel And when their
blood could no longer be coined into gold
Lney were, oy metnods more or less direct
'sent to die."
Such were the relations Of the black
mans race at the close of the war to u.s.
our government, and to God. When the
war began we meant still to coin his blood
drops and flesh into gold, and rebel gold
at tnat, and we went into the contest so
proclaiming to history. We thought this
was in our bond Years of war and disas-
ter TO our armies went BY, and sill we
forced them back from our camp fires,
whittier they came with intelligence that
1t times saved our armies, into reoel owner r-J