The weekly North-Carolina standard. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 186?-1869, 1868-08-19
Backbone.

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Backbone.
The granite formation has been called the
backbone of the earth, and the old earth
from having So stiff backbone has man
aged to swifg in her orbit ever so many
million of years. The spinal column has
been called the backbone of man, and man,
through countless ages, from having so good
a spinal column has managed to stand erect
and lord it over all the beasts of the earth.
The human will has been called the back
bone of the mind, and man from having so
resolute and determined will has been able
to cleave his way through opposing forces
until he has attained to some dignity of sta
ton in the history of living beings. All sue
cess depends more or less upon the health,
irmness and durability OF the backbone. A
feeble and diseased one soon drags all
around it into decay and death; strong
and healthy one keeps everything around it
alive and moving.
For months the Democratic party has been
fiattering itself that disease had at last seized
upon the Backbone of the Republican party;
that the poison of timidity had entered its
veins; that the old rebel war whoop, the old
revolver, the bowie knife and the bludgeon
had made it tremble and shake; that the
ghost of the bastard 'Southern chivalry"
rising up from the graves of the assassins of
Lincoln had caused it to shrivel up with
horror and disappear from all organic ex-
-; -rrsat the mistake.
Rebel buster has ceased to frighten even the
most timed of earth's creatures. The back
bone of an infant is erect before it, an in
fant's voice can silence its leudest threat.
The rebel leaders of to-day are making
the same fearful mistake they made when
they pointed the first gun at Sumter. They
have learned nothing from four years of
bloody strife Brainless, penniless, stupid,
they still imagine that this great nation is
to he broken up and ruined, simply because
they have not the sagacity to see, or the
honesty to admit if seeing, that every inch
of Southern soil could be scraped clean from
the Potomac to the gulf and left as naked
of habitations and homes as when Colum-
bus found it, without in the least impairing
the integrity of the great nation of the Uni
ted States. The nation conquered in the
late war and the nation will own and con-
troll what she conquered. No little petty
State can rise up and say, I did it. The people
representing the civilization and enlighten-
ment of the nineteenth century took it upon
themselves to settle forever this question of
the superiority of free institutions. The war
was not merely a conflict of arms, and shall
low must be the man who still believes it.
1t was conflict of brains, of ideas, of mind
with matter. of moral ideas with physical
forces, of right with wrong, of truth with
falsehood, of justice with injustice, of slavery
with freedom. And yet these diseased,
crippled, spineless, leaders of the Lost
Cause" grasp their crutches: hobble up upon
platforms, below out their platitudes, shake
their little rag of Confederate flag to a
corporal's guard of fools, as shallow as them
selves. and pretend to believe that the great
party that not only saved the nation from
destruction, but lifted it up above all other
nations,is growing weak in its spinal column,
has lost its backbone and is to lie helpless
Oh its back while che wheezy old party
who made the South desert, and laid her
noblest sons in their graves through their
folly, are again to walk into places of honor
and direct the destinies of the pcople9 1t is
strange that these old leaders cannot learn
anything by experience; cannot understand
/ the purpose and genius of the men with
whom they have been ut war.
Governments are instituted to protect
persons in the enjoyment of life, liberty and
the possession of property. Think you, the
the men who own the property of the nation
who are building the railroads, digging the
canals, developing the resources of the earth
in all its varied richness, and making all
that portion OF the country North of the Po-
tomac and the Ohio throb with life and en-
ergy, are going to permit the old rebel lead
ers, who fastened a debt of three thousand
millions upon them, also burthen them with
the payment of their own Confederate bonds
And think you they are going to allow an
other civil war to he sprung upon the coun-
try without struggle to prevent it. These
old rebel leaders have nothing to lose, and,
therefore, they want to fight. But the Re-
publican party has something to lose, and
will rally to man from one end of the
country to the other, to protect that some
thing from being lost or stolen. The same
physical vigor and stamina; the same back
bone that sustained it through the war will