Weekly Trinity journal., 1868-09-26
from the New York Tribune.1
Labor, Taxes and Debt.

Our country was recently the theater of vast
and sanguinary civil war. civil war is ALWAYS
more destructive of property than any other;
and this war, wherein not less than three mil.
lions of men took part and nearly or quite fifteen
hundred thousand were engaged at one time.
was destructive beyond precedent. Railroads
unknown to the warfare of former centuries)
were broken up, by one or other of the belliger-
euts, to the extent of thousands of miles steam
boats and costly bridges were burned consider
able cities even, were laid in ashes. The rebels
hnrned at New Orleans and at Richmond. when
compelled to abandon those cities, many mil
lions worth of property while Charleston, Nor
folk, ycksburg and other cities, were scenes of
ruinous devastation.
the country not less than FIVE billions of dollars
In other words, there are probably five thousand
millions worth less Of houses, factories, fur
naces, fences, railroads, steamboats,, cleariups
&C., &C., now included within the area of the
United States, than there would have been if Mr..
Lincon's first election to the Presidency had not
been followed by the shareholders rebellion
Do you beliere that rebellion was necessary or
juste That is the fundamental question in our
pending political contest. For, if the rebellion
was just, then those who resisted it are fairly
chargeable with the cost of resisting and defeat
ing it. If the election of Abraham Lincoln by
the Republicans justified Howell Cobb, Toombs.
JEFF. Davis, Slidell, Mason Co., in conspiring
to sever the Southern States from the Union and
erect them into an Independent confederacy, then
the North, and not the South, is to blame for the
war, and ought to pay its entire cost. Then the
national debt is fairly chargeable to those who
contracted it, not to those whose rebellion was
overcome by means of it. That debt is stub
born fact. 1t will have to be borne and paid.
Even if the people should vote to repudiae it,
that would not diminish its burden by single
dime. The American people would still owe it.,
and would ultimately be constrained to pay
every farthing of it.
Over fifty years ago, Great Britain and Spain
emerged from long and desolating war, where
in each had incurred heavy national debt.
Great Britain resolved to pay her debt honestly,
to the last farthing; and she has ever since been
steadily growing in population and wealth.
Spain sank into the bog of Reputation, and
there she lies stranded to this hour. Her power
has vanished with her forfeited credit her in
dustry, commerce and wealth have steadily de-
clined she is the football of the great powers,
and of more real weight than Denmark or
Morocco. Her people, abject and hopeless, have
sunk at last into seeming content under the
double burden of despotism and infamy.
Are there voters who blame the Republicans
for the of secession? They will vote of
course, to turn the Republicans out and restore
Howell Cobb, Toombs, Wade Hampton 4 Co. to
power. These men raised the flag of rebellion
because Mr.. Lincoln was-through their own
connivance, in breaking up the Democratic
party-elected President. If they were right in
so doing, then the debt, the pension list, ard
consequent heavy taxes, are rightly scored up
against who resisted them. But if the rebel
lion was wrong and they who upheld the Union
were right, then the national debt embodes
twenty-five hundred millions of solid reasons
why the rebel chiefs and their allies ought not
now to be ntrusted with the government of the
country. And every poor man, who finds his
comforts diminished by taxation, should vote to
keep them out