Clarksville chronicle. (Clarksville, Tenn.) 186?-1872, 1868-01-24
Gbror1iltls.
R. W. THOMAS. As,...................EDIToI

l
the North are destined to occupy ,
very unenviable attitude on the very
points upon which they base theil
claims to purity of motives in origi
mating and prosecuting that war.
Those points are the maintainance o.
Constitution and the preservation o.
he Union. Under this war cry, the
northern people became frantic, eacf
vieing with the other which should
be the first to enlist for the crusade
against that monster, the South, that
was attacking the citadel Of Ameri
can liberty. In their phrenzy, they
were dead to all the instincts of hu'
manity and regardless Of all the rules
Of civilized warfare, and robbed the
widow and the orphan, burned the
roofs that sheltered them and des.
troyed in their march all that could
not be pro6tably remitted to Their
own homes. And to-day, jewels and
clothes and plate and furniture and
pictures decorate tho wives and par
lors of those brave defenders of the
constitution and Union who canfoun-
ded theft with potriotism, aud mur.
der and brutality with the rights Of
man. After four years of enormities
rarely perpetrated outside Of heath
endom, and the sacrafice of hundreds
Of thousands Of fellow beings, the
North was victorious, the war was at
an end, and now, lift be not treason,
we would ask, where are the Constitu-
ton and Union?
History will answer that the disu-
nion which the South could not effect,
has been accomplished by the very
people who fought and stole and lied
for its preservation, and that, by the
same parties, the Constitution was
killed and buried in the grave of civ
il liberty. From these facts, poster
ity must infer that the plea for the
war was lie, and the correctness Of
the inference will be established by
the additional fact that so soon as
slavery was abolished, the rampant
defenders Of the Constitution and
noisy Union -sbriekers folded their
arms and looked on not only compla-
Gently, but encouragingly, whilst the
institutions for whiah they, profess
edly fought, were destroyed by the
bold usurpations of a single Depart
ment of the government.
The conclusion from all this, must
be that it would have been better for
humanity, natioal honor, the cause of
liberty and political justice, if the
South had been permitted to 90 in
peace, since the opposite policy re.
suited in the destruction of all the
safeguards of liberty in both sections,
severed the Union and heaped upon
the government and its armies a load
of crime and dishonor from which
no effort can free them.
The war was the offspring Of cal
culating hypocricy and blind fanati-
cism, and its results the work of
fends in human form, their motives
were as base as their objects were
unpatriotic and destructive, and the
end justifes the assertion. We are
proud to know that, amid the crime
and desolation wrought by the pre-
tended friends of the Constitution
and the Union, the motives and con-
duct Of the dead Confederacy erect
themselves as an imperishable mon
ument of heroic devotion to the cause
ofliberty. Every act of the Radicals
since the close Of the war has been an
additional yindication of the South,
and the man is not of sane mind who
can conscienciously blamel it for
seeking to be separated from the law
less and heartless, and heartlcss, and
hypocritical wretclies who, for more
than six years, have administered,
cursed and degraded the government,
themselves and the people.