The Ottawa free trader. [volume] (Ottawa, Ill.) 1843-1916, 1867-05-25
Release of Je6. Davis,

| AItcilluS W0u SoiA AulIllSu rs uuCu luHuy
reading as the smaller fry of Republican pa
pers afford these days in their comments on
the release of jeff. Davis. The stupid amaze
ment with which they receive the announce
ment is irresistibly ludicrous, but the wild,
increduious stare with which they learn that
men like Horace Greeley and Gerrit Smith
rushed to Richmond to be his bondsmen, is
enough to make horse laugh. The poor Of
tawa Republican" says, "Greelcy made an
ass of himself His rushing to Richmond
was wholly unnecessary, &c. The Morris
Herald" thinks it dastardly piece of bust
ness, and says " the blood of the martyrs and
the spirits of the disembodied soldiers Of the
Union cry out in very shame at the release of
this arch-traitor, who filed thousands Of
graves with our dead heroes, and made a
house of mourning of every city, village and
town in the land" And & little Indiana paper
before us breaks out in this wise:
"A criminal though he is, whose inhuman
deeds curdle the blood and invoke an involun-
tary prayer for justice, prisoner only in form.
he, Jefferson Davis stands in reality the natiOn's
hOnOredgueSt shame, where is thy blush! o
justice, where is thy evenly poised scale and thy
keen-edged sword"
AS to the REASON why the radicals could
never get ready to try jeff Davis, and why
such radical leaders as Greeley, Gerrit Smith,
&c. are SO rejOiced at his release, these papers
seem not to have the remotcst inkling. The
Ottawas" Republican" evidently views it as
case Of overstrained magnanimity, while other
of its country" contemporaries treat 1t as a
"great outrage" &c.
1t Is an outrage. We insisted, when Davis
was first taken, that he should be tried for
treason and hung. But we also said at the
time that it would not be done; for we knew
from the beginning it was not in the radical
books that Davis or Lee, or any of the rebel
leaders should be tried for treason and hung.
Such trial and conviction for treason, affirm
ed by thu Supreme Court of the United States,
would have put the seal of condemnation upon
every act of Congress passed from the end of
the war to this day in reference to the South
ern states. 1t would have settled the point
that the Southern people were traitors for
which they could only be punished asindivid-
uals, and that all this punitive legislation
against states, and this military surveillance
over the South, and this reconstruction bu-
siness, and inauguration of negro suffrage,
was grossly and shamefully illegal and uncon-
stitutional. Magnanimity !" men like Sum-
ner, Stevens, Wendell Philips, Ben Wade, &C.,
would drink the blood of Davis like nectar, if
the shedding of that blood did not debar
them from the greater enjoyment of pursuing
the millions Of the South with the keener pro-
longed cruelty they had in store for them in
their punitive legislation. What would the
South care for the hanging Of JEFF Davis, and
Lee and Beauregard, compared with the deep
humiliation and cruelty Of being disfranchised
themselves and their governments placed in
the hands of the british and besotted negro
For the benefit of our comical neighbor of
the Republican" in the bright beam of whose
syes We somehow can never seem - anything
but az, ogre delighting only in the horrors Of
the slave mart and branching Of the bones of
the down tfodden, We will say, that We always
hated slavery, black or white, and sincerely re-
joice that the curse Of negro slavery is eradica-
ted from our land; but we conceive the ques.
ton to be Q very different one whether the
constitution Of our fathers shall be trodden
under foot, for the purpose of placing the gov.
ernmeut Of hslfof this country (merely to save
the Republican party in the hands of race,
Of whom such high authority as Professor
AGAsslz gives us the following "natursl his
tory"
II have pointed out over hundred specific
differences between the bonal and nervous svs.
TENS Of tho white man and negro. Indeed their
frames are alike in no particular. There il not Q
bone in the negros body which IL relatively the
same shape. size. articulation, - that Of the white
man. The negfos bones contain Q far greater
percentage Of calcareous salt than those Of the
white man, even the negto's blood 10 chemical
y very different 6uid from that which courses
in the veins Of the white man. The whole physi.
cal organism OF the negro differs quiet a. much
nom the white mans q II does from that Of the
chimpanzee-that IL, In his bones muscles, nerves
ana nores the chimpsnEce hes not much further
Ploe'ess 70 become negro than negro has 10
CsSQ%e vnise man: !hi. fact science ihexor-
NO more TO do with the difference between the
White %as and the negro and chimpan.eo,
shsn It has between the horse and the ass. or the
eagle and the owl. Each IL distinct and sepss.
ate creation The negro and the white man were
created - different n the owl and the eagle
They were designed TO all different places In the
system Of nature. The negro il NO more negro by
sccioens OF misfortune than the owl 10 the kind
/ hA d hw~