The Irish republic. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1867-18??, 1867-05-11
Southern Reconstruction.

We select this subject for present consideration
not only because it is of absorbing interest, but
because have right, and it is our duty, to dis
cuss it. We are Irshmen, it is true, but we are
also American citizens, and therefore we have and
ought to have deep concern in everything that
affects the stability or the welfare Of this great Re-
public.
We are the friends of freedom to Ireland and to
all men, Such is our creed. It is alike simple and
sublime. America occupies her proper place
in the vanguard of the nations. She is, indeed and
in truth, the very home of holy liberty. Here her
poor and prosecuted exiles-driven from every
other land-fnd shelter and subsistence. Here,
when she the altar of her worship her eagle
eye can see no slave among the wyriads who do
homage at her shrine.
But we would have this country something more
than dead, stereotyped pattern, even of per-
feet liberty. We would have her the living, ear
nest, active propagandist of its eternal principles.
To be that her people must be united, that they
may be powerful And ri ght well her enemies I'M
derstano it. The late attempt to rend her asunder
was the work not only of internal traitors, but of
external tyrants. For, in her division and de-
struction they hoped to find renewed lease oftheir
unhalowed power. But let America with fearless
impartiality, trample prejudice we'll as tyranny
beneath her feet-et her secure, irrespective ofcoor
or creed, equal rights to all-and she is ready to
enter on a career Of moral conquest which will not
end till the last vestige of tyranny, which encum
bers the EARTH shall be hurled back to the hell in
which it was generated. The oppressor everywhere
hears the thunder of her march and pales and
trembles like him of old who saw the finger which
wrote his doom upon the wall. And the struggling
sons of liberty throughout all lands, pluck up heart
and hope once more, and rise, with redoubled
strength, to renew the eternal war; for, as the
battle song of Republican France tells us, in words
of fire,
"Liberte liberte chere
Combats avee les defenseurs." *
When the giant conflict which, for four dreadful
years, convulsed these United States came happily
and suddenly to an end, it was believed and hoped
by every true friend of humanity that-slavery
being for ever abolished-freedom for every man,
of every race and Of every color would be inviol-
ably and perpetualy established.
And so it would have been had the Iamented
LINCOLN been left to finish the glorious work to
which, at his countrys CALL he herocally devoted
himself We know full we'll that vengeance was
not IN his heart nor was it either part parcel of
his cherished policy. On the contrary, he was pre-
pared as far the common veal would possibly
permit, to pardon the wholesale and horrible
crimes committed by those who commenced the
war; But we also know that he was not the man
to permit private feelings, however amiabe, to
prevent the performance of public duty. Hence
there cannot be, in any intelligent and unbiased
mind the shadow of doubt that whatever was
necessary to establish the Anaericam Union on the
" liberty Liberty,