The Wheeling daily register. [volume] (Wheeling, W. Va.) 1864-1878, 1868-10-03
GEN. EWING's SPEECH,
AT coLUmBUs, OHIO,
Last 9 Tuesday Evening
An Able and Interesting EX-
pose Of the Situation by Il
Brave Soldier.

-. - Z. -V ..E
From the Ohio Statesman, Sept. 3Oth.
The Democratic meeting at the west
ern terrace of the State House, in all that
constitutes success, was the grandest
and most imposing speech of the cam
paign.
The procession of the White Boys in
Blue, with their lanterns, was the finest
and largest ever held in Columbus-the
fireworks were grand-the sea of up
turned faces was sea indeed, and the
numbers who lined the portico and
stood upon the steps of the Ohio Capitol
and upon the walks and grass of the
State House yard, listening to the gifted
and patriotic Ewing, as he exposed the
crimes of Radical treachery, constituted
the largest, most orderly and as enthu-
siastic meeting as was ever held yet
either in Columbus or out Of it.
Col. Baber, as President of the meet
ing, introduced Gen. Ewing to the vast
assemblage as a native son of Ohio, who
bears a historic name-the lustre of
which he has fully maintained in the
war for the Union. The Union and the
Constitution for which he and his dis
tisguished brother-in-law General Sher-
man, with thousands of your brave SOL
dier boys fought, is again put in jeopar-
dy by Congressional usurpers and con-
spirators, whom he will handle without
gloves as he did the rebels when in
arms.
Gen. Ewing coming forward was
greeted with loud and continued ap-
pla use.
1t did him good, he said, to see such
demonstration, and to meet again, face
to face, so many of his gallant comrades
in arms who, with him had done battle
for the Union. He had neither voice
nor time to discuss at great length the
issues of the day, as he would wish to
discuss them before such an audience.
In his travels over the State, he felt the
pulse of the people of Ohio, and he now
saw before him, in the vast audience
and in the demonstration of tonight,
that the heart of Ohio was right.
On tie subject of reconstruction, Gen.
Ewing said that on he lst of Decem-
Der, 1863, when Congress met, all the
Southern States had governments OF
their own, reorganized under the aus
pices of Presidents Lincoln and johnson,
by the white electors of those States,
who were qualified to vote under their
State Constitutions and laws as they eX-
listed when the war broke out.
The whole machinery of government
in those States was working III perfect
order. Their Constitutions and laws
had been Notwithstanding slavery,
renouacing the false doctrine of seces-
sion, repudiating the rebel debt, assum-
ing the National debt, giving to negroes
the right to hold property and to sue IN
the courts, and, in short, recognizing
and accepting, in the most binding and
explicit form, every known result OF the
war. They sent Senators and Represen-
tatives to Congress. Some OF them
could take the oath prescribed by the
law of 1862 and could have been ad-
mitted under it; others could not. II
Congress had admitted those who could
take that oath, who had been loyal dur
ing the war, and sent the Others back
t1 their constituents for those constlt-
uents to fill their places with men who
had been loyal during the war, we would
have had no rebels In either branch of
Congress-; no "red-handed rebels" and
the Union would have been fully restor-
ed on terms of perfect amity and salts
faction to the whole people of the coun-
try, North and South.
You recollect perfectly well, gentle
men, said Mr.. Ewing, that from the
time Mr.. Lincoln, in 1861, commenced
to aid the Southern people in restoring
their relations to the Union, Congress,
in eyery possible form, recognized that
mode of restoring the relations OF the
Southern States TO the Union as the leg
itimate, constitutional mode. They ad-
mitted Senators and Representatives,
from Virginia, from Tennessee, and from
Louisiana, who sat in Congress until
1864. They took the assent OF the GOV
ernment of old Virginia, to the torma-
tion of the New State of West Virginia.
They submitted to the Governments OF
the Southern States, III 1865, the Constl-
tutional Amendment abolishlng slave
ry; all of them accepted it, and to-day
slavery is not abolished in this country
by the Constitution of the United States,
unless those Governments reorganlZed
by the white electors of those States un-
der the advice of Presidents johnson
and Lincoln were valid State Govern
ments, for there has been no Constitu-
tional Amendment abolishing slavery
except that.
In the fall of 1865, after these restora-
tion measures had been fully carried out
in all the Southern States, the Republi-
can party, in all their State conventions
in the North, except Massachusetts, ex-
plicitly indersed this reconstruction pol
| lev. The Democratic party all over the
North also endorsed it. ltwas accepta-
BILE to the whole white people of the
South, aye, and to the colored people OF
the South, for / venture to say that un.
der this plan of adjustment, and in the
wear 1865, there was a kindlier relation
existing between the blacks and the
whites, throughout all the Southern
States, than has ever existed since.
In other words this adjustment OF
President Lincoln and President John
son was fully recognized in every posi-.
ble form by the Congress of the United
states. and was acceptable to the whole
neonle of this country. Now, if that
enlistment had been allowed to be per-
fected we should be in a vastly better
condition to day than we are now. AL
the Southern States would have been al
once upon their feet; there would have
been no threatened war Of races, no herce
passions aroused in the South to preeip'
itate conflicts between the races and u
make every body in the Southern States
feel that it was useless for him TO SOW
because he did net know who woult