Nashville union and dispatch. [volume] (Nashville, Tenn.) 1866-1868, 1867-05-12
4 MAN WHO HAS LOST POLITICAL
LOG-BOOR, AND ~ IN SEARCH OF
HIS RECKONING

Correspondence Of the Union and Dispatch.
MURFREEsBoRo', May 10, 1877 en-
close six dollars, in currency, for which
please send your daily TO my address.
have been without a paper for some time
past, and begin 10 find myself regular
Rip Van Wrinkle When | went into my
long political doze ! had a very strong
conviction that the aspiration of the South
ern people for political independence was
dictated by the dearest foresight of their So
cial moral and political good had an idea
that the Yankee was an acute animal, very
dexterious, mentally and physically, but
Withal rather selfish and very much given
10 intermeddling with other peoples bust
ness. / had thought that Il would have
been well enough il in administering the
government they had been content 10 allow
modicum Of political sagscity TO the men
who made IL, and not have changed il with
out grave reasons. / thought that the
States Of the Union had surrendered pow
ers enough 10 the Federal government,
aud that all fears Of encroachment were 10
be apprehended from the former and not
from the latter But il seems that in
all these things | was very gravely
mistaken. If the current political
philosophy is the true one. il is a good
thing that Congress usurps all the powers
OF the government, both State and Federal.
IL is a good thing that they have trodden
under foot both the personal and political
independence of the Southern people. Il
Is a good thing that We are beasts of bur
then 10 pay taxes without voting 10 sup
pon government by which We are out
lawed. This is the accepted theory. Il is
all a mistake 10 suppose that Summer,
Phillips, Greeley, and men Of their kidney
are dangerous agitators and abolitionism.
with the long list of horrors that il drew
after IL, was Just and right and statesman.
like. All these things are true, and il is
inst and right that we should say amen TO
an act of wholesale confscation that re
duoed TO beggary thousands of women and
children who had committed no offence
against this government What an offense
70 would be to compare the model republic
with the old, worn out corrupt British
monarchy that has been depressing Irish
patriots for To- these hundreds of years. But
when the British government opened their |
eyes TO the sin Of slavery, they paid the
owners whose slaves were emancipated |
But there was something peculiar in
Yankee experience on this subject |
ahe decAaIdtlon OF. independence uld
not open their eyes 10 the enormity of
slavery until they had sold all their slaves
10 the South then they found out that it |
was q great sin, not for them, bat for 9TH
ers, TO hold slaves. Then they went to work |
and abolished il, not by paying the owners,
oh no for property in human beings was
"a guilty phantasy, and they could not re-
cognize its justice by any sort of compen-
sation"
! hope gentlemen, YOU will allow me
little grumbling. Where ideas are old /
fashioned and worn out nobody entertains /
them now, and are not more likely to inAu-
enoe modern opinion, than reading of the
sanity doings ofthe Puritan commonwealth |
Of two hundred years ago. when their sol
diers took the sacrament before going 10 the /
murder of squaws and papooses.
But send the paper l will forget all |
these things-will believe that the Yankee
nation is a great nation, that we have the
hest government the world ever saw and
IL make such progress in loyalty as some
Of your contemporaries have done, | will,
ere long believe that Beast Butler is sol
dier and a gentleman" and will be ready
10 join Beecher and the incendiary Of Co
lambia in pilgrimage 70 the Holy Land.