The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1867-10-10
SPIRIT or THE PRESS.
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Upon CURRKET ToPICs-CoMPnED EVERY
DAY FOB THE EVENING TELEGRAPH.

FS.OTn The ~, 4. IuneSs
We published few days since letter from
Gsperal Barringer, of North Carolina, urging
tho South to accept, or, at all events, to ac-
o,iosce in. the Congressional plan OF recon-
str,,o,ion. Il embodied many very cogent and
,,ouzorful reasons why such course should
- rnrsued. Laying aside all questions of
foolip0-all ordinations and recriminations
for the wrongs and sufferings of the past, he
insisted that the very existence of the South
depended upon her acquiescence in the policy
of the victorious power to which she had been
compelled to yield, and he cited the success
sive steps of suffering and of loss by which
her successive refusals so to do had been re-
septed and punished by the Conquering and
dominant party-until it has finally culmi-
mated in enforced negro suffrage, the disfran-
cbisement of large portion of the white
voters, and the subsection OF the Southern
States to military rule. And he pointed, by
way Of warming to the certainty that, II the
South still refuses acquiescence, she will be
subjected inevitably to increased suffering and
humiliation.
All this is clearly and undeniably true. 1t
is very easy to say and to prove, that it ought
not to be So but all the argument in the
world will not disprove the fact. 1t is quite
clear to everybody that the war is ended and
that
their old feelings and their old relations;
but the fact is they do not resume them, and
all the logic in the world will not alter that
fact, II seems to our minds, perfectly
clear that all the passions which the war
aroused, all the resentments which its hor-
rors engendered, all the hatreds which fol-
lowed in its track, ought to subslde and no
longer influence the action of either section
towards the other; but they have not sub
sided, nevertheless; they are still active, pow
erful, and unrelenting. The action of Con-
gress, and of the people of the loyal States,
is still largely controlled not by their calm
and sober judgment as to the requirements
Of justice and public policy, but by the
feelings and sentiments which the war en-
gendered, and which a thousand things, the
provocations of the South, the action of the
President, the appeals of public speakers, and
the public press, the schemes OF demagogues
and the reckless ambition of selfish and un
scrupulous partisan leaders, continue to keeI
alive.
The truth is neither section, and but few
persons in either section, appreciate fully the
tremendous effects of civil war, and especially
of such war as ours, upon every interest and
every sentiment of the whole community.
One might as well expect order and symmetry
in the architecture of a great city after an
earthquake as to look for cool judgment and
sober reason the moment the thunders of such
LOuCl6S
everything, and leaves nothing as it found it.
Great rights, great interests, great systems of
habit and of thought, disappear during its
progress. 1t leaves us a different people in
everything from what we were when it came
upon us. The war created a perfect revolu-
ton in the public mind-in our modes oI
thinking on public questions, and of dealing
with political and social interests. Slavery
once seemed to us a gigantic evil-prO-
tected from our hatred only by the
Constitution; but it disappeared so sud
denly and so completely, that our respect for
what was so long its bulwark is no longer
what it was. The power which destroyed
slavery in spite of the Constitution seems to
us greater than the Constitution itself. And
the general effect Of the war has been very
greatly to weaken our respect for all the forms
and provisions of fundamental law which
stand between the will of the people and the
objects which they think ought to be accom-
plished. The war has ended, but the revo
luton has not. The victory Of the North a
once demonstrated its power and stimulated
the determination to use it. 1t was not easy
for the conquering party to throw down the
weapons the moment they had achieved theil
victory. There were too many things which
ought still to be accomplished, for them Il
stop short suddenly in what had proved to be
SO brilliant and so successful a career Thad
deus Stevens expressed the general sentiment
supposed, or than the North would admit
when he said in Congress that having got rio
of all constitutional restrictions and limita
tiOns of power by the war, Congress should
not restore the Union as our fathers had mad,
IL, but should seize the opportunity to recon
,Struct it, and make it what it should be.
The country in its political action to day il
following, not the dictates and prescription
of the Constitution, but what it deems tn
necessities and requirements of the poltica
emergency. Arguments drawn from the Con
sttution, from the precedents of our history
or the opinions of the statesmen Of our earle
days, are heard with impatence and dismisse
with contempt. public writer or a publ
speaker incurs only derisiOn by insisting upo
anything in the past--laws, usages, or any
thing else-as conclusive in regard to any
thing that is of the present. Even the pas
pledges of political parties have no NOR
vitality or force than the old newspapers i
which they are recorded. Everything said @
done before the war is as dead as if it wer
done before the flood. That great catastroph
swept away everything that was old, and CAV
US new political heaven and new politics
earth' And all our views of public affairs, a
ouI action on political subjects, all our judI
menus menus OF the present and our speculation
SpoIt the iuture, are colored and controlle
we 90 not say that this is right, but II is
faot' IL may not be constitutional. but IL
actual Perhaps the country ought not TO
thus goVerneu-Dut 1t is and will be-not b
cause IL Is IN accordance with abstract reasc
ana Jusuce, put because it is in accordan
with the instincts and impulses of hmm,
NJ fnnWr