The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1868-08-29
The Ola Issue Over Again.
ON, ths AZ Y Ihihalnn

Dearly as the American people loved peace,
many of them feared that the war would end
too soon. There We're periods in the Rebellion
when peace would have been greater curse
than score OF battles fought on Northern
soil, and the capture of q dozen Northern
cities. Better that the Rebel flag had 1oated
in 1863 over the old State House in Phiadel-
phia, wherein the first Congress declared
American independence, than that the armis-
tice had been granted which the Democratic
party urged and the Rebel Government
desired. Better, far better, that the war
were raging now, with Grant still before Rich
mOnd, and Sherman at Atlanta, than that
the people OF the North had indorsed the
declaration of the Democratic party in 1864
that the war was failure, aud comp promise
with traitors necessity. Peace hath her
blessings, and war, even in the noblest cause,
cannot be other than giant evil; but
false peace comes sometimes to a nation,
crowned with thorns and robed in shame,
Offering short res pite as the price of long
misery, and perpetuating the strife which she
pretends to end. Boodshed is not the worst
of evils. 1t is better that men should die
than that principles should be destroyed. For
such reasons many Of US feared that peace
would come too soon. After Bull Run the
whole North repudiated the idea with indgna-
tiOn; the Union could not treat with victo-
rious Rebellion. AS the war grew older men
trusted that victory would not come till elav-
cry had been abolished. Long before May,
1865, the loyal men of the United States were
resolved that the Rebellion should be utterly
crushed, and that the elements of treason
should be extirpated. When Lee surrendered
to Grant We thought that the Rebellion was
ended.
Is it ended? No. From all parts of the
South and from many men in the North comes
the assurance that the war tor the Union
ended too soon. Their voices tell us that Nc
Clellan's weary and costly delays were not
blunders; that Grant made an error when he
closed up the war in the West, and forced the
fighting in Virginia. that Sherman should have
waited at Atlanta and delayed for another
year his triumphant march to the sea. Those
magnificent combinations, by which the supe-
rior strength of the Union was brought to bear
upon every point of resistance simultaneously,
were fatal mistakes. We are taught every day
that the war should have been indefinitely
prolonged; that the Rebellion should have
been crushed inch by inch, till it's leaders had
died in battle or fled from the country; till its
armies had dwinded into bands OF robbers
till it had been driven into the woods and
swamps, to starve and perish where the negro
had starved and perished in the days when
rebellion was only an uplitted menace in that
insulting hand which slavery shook in the
face of the republic. Victory was as prema-
ture, we are assured, in 1865 as it would have
Deeu III 1OoA' ANoIhlpS nas ueOlueu " tho
war, if we may trust the defiance now hurled
at us by the South. 1t has gone back to 1860,
and proposes to begin over again.
But there is a difference. In 1860 the
country was warned that Rebellion would fol-
low the election of Republican President.
in 1868 Rebellion is promised in case of a
Republican defeat. The election of Seymour
and Blair is to be the signal of another war.
The Rebels of the South have made it un-
mistakably clear that they intend that De-
lost at ViclSsburg, and Gettysburg, and Rich
mond. The lost cause of the South is found
again, and lives in the Democratic party. The
Rebellion declares that Grant did not subdue
it, and that it is ready to fight again. Let us
hear it speak.
FIapk Blair promises revolution IL he is
elected, Robert TOOmbs declares that "the
Reconstruction acts are null and void and