Des Arc weekly citizen., 1868-08-04
Prom the National htslligencer.
 "Let Us Have Peace.o

"Let Us Have Peace."
 More than three years have passed away since the rebel armies were dis persed and the rebellion was crushed. Not single effort has been since Lee 8 surrender to resist the national author ity, or to prevent friedship and harmo- nv. The South had and has the great est interest in condition of perfect peace, because through that agency alone can its prosperity be recovered or its losses repaired. And yet the state of the country is really worse to- day than it was at the close of the war, and has been made so entirely by the determination of the Radical rulers to foment discord and prolong strife in the interests of their political ascend ancy. Restore the South to it's normal relations in the Union, let commerce and intercourse resume their accustom- ed ways, revive credit and confidence between the two sections, and the Rad ical party would at once cease to exist, and be dissolved by natural law. It lives by agitation alone, and hence all it's policy is directed to keep up agi- tation. Ice sNa s y0 It is for this reason that all the vari- ous schemes of reconstruction have been invented to oppress and degrade the Southern people; that military despotism more odious and outrageous than any devised by Austrian tyranny has been continued; that the Freed mems Bureau has been extended, and that bloody riots have been encourag- ed to influence public opinion. All these diabolical inventions were. con- trived for the single purpose of keep 1 ing up irritation, and of excluding the South from the Union. Had there been the least sincere wish for peace, or any capacity in Congress to bring it about, all these differences would have been settled, and all the wounds closed at the very first session after tho war 1 had ceased. a efg
 l But there was no such intention, and no such desire. The best proof of that | fact is to be found in the bitterness with which the conciliatory course of Mir. Lincoln was pursued, and the man. ner in which he was personally perse- cuted by the Summers, Stevenses, and others, who, since his death, have been seeking popularity out of the memory | of the man whom they had unscrupu- lously assailed while living. They | thought to stimulate bad passions in the South, and to provoke resentment by the most cruel and dastardly wrongs, hoping to convert that resent ment into political capital, and to spec ulate upon it as an article of trade. This is the spirit in wkich they have l treated proud and prostrate people 1 of their own blood, and after imposing terms the most disgraceful to our age and civilization they expect them to kiss the rod, and to accept their degra- dation as boon.
 1 Now that they have established ne- l gro supremacy by the power of the bayonet; that they have subjected the white men, women, and children of the South to the brutal barbarism of 1 their slaves; that they have elevated l ignorance, vice, loathsome sensuality, \ and crime into the high places of trust ] and honor, above virtue, integrity, in- l telligencc, and education; that they have overrun the South with plunder- l ing adyenturers, canting hypocrits, and carpet-bag knaYes; that they have, by force and fraud and villainy, secured | possession of the State governments, and placed the whole political power in the hands of hired negro emissaries and thieving agents of the Freedmen's g l Bureau; and that they robbed ruined ] people of almost their last dollar by an l infamous system of taxation, imposed by negroes destitute of property and debased in ignorance--after commit ting these cri mes, and others equally atrocious, their leader, General Grant, under the instructions of his keepers, has the assurance to say "Let us have peace" The men who have kept up the war during the last three years, and who design to keep it up in the future as they have done in the past, on the eve of the election cry out ''peace," that is to say. peace which is to bow down in submission before a negro supremacy, and to accept it as Q condition of toleration.
 We tell these vindictive and desper. ate destructives that there can be no real peace so long as the white race of the South is subjected to the rule of the black, and that the return of all mate- rial prosperity is impossible while that domination continues. They devised it with perverse ingenuity to shut out a possibility of reconciliation, and as O means of prolonging sectional strife.
 Let us not be deceived by the hypoc- risy of those who prate of 'peace," and whose policy is war. They seek to embroil the country in new civil war, in the hope of distributing another thousand millions of the peoples mon- ey among shoddy contractors, Radical demagogues, and manufacturing mo- nopolists. But they seem to forget that if such calamity should again befal the country by Aeir wicked and wilful designs, it will involve no local passion or interests, but every man who loves the Constitution, who re- spects it's obligations, who is, determin- ed to preserved the liberties and rights which it guarantees, and who is oppos- ed to the subjection of the white race to the negro. The soldiers who went into the war of rebellion volunteered to fight for the Union, under solemn pledge made by both branches of Con- grss that it was not to be prosecuted for any purpose of subiugation. They were betrayed then but they will not be deceived again. The war was con- verted into political crusade for pow CT, and now with three thousand mill lions of debt, and half 8 million of lives sacrificed, they proposed to renew it, with the sole object of preserving an ascendancy thus obtained.
 And, in order to promote that scheme they have cast aside all their own lead CTS, repudiated the men by whose abil- ity and skill the party was created, and adopted the general of our armies as . candidate, looking to this intended contingency. Such is the explanation of his nomination, and the true reading of the canting words which they have put into his mouth. "Let us have peace." They intend another civil war, and have so shaped their meas ures as to render it almost inevitable. ] aral mi ic mt nf