Dodgeville chronicle. [volume] (Dodgeville, Wis.) 1862-current, 1868-10-02
"The Lost Cause.0

EIGHT years ago, and from that date on
ward for considerable period, there was
not in the world more confident and de-
fiant cause than that of the rebellion. The
attack on the Union was plotted with the
of assumed invincible superiority,
and made with the insolence of conquest
already achieved. The trickery, fraud,
theft and violence which prepared the
way for war, betokened in their authors
an assumption of absolute power to vim
dicate their course at the bar of right and
on any possible field of conflict The
men who seized arsenals, forts and ships,
who stole the money and arms and ammu-
milton, who purloined the secrets of the
War Office and raised the flag of secession,
had at least the courage of unbounded con-
ceit, and gaily fiattered themselves that
they were the latest and greatest heroes
of the world. Bombastic braggarts in
reality, in too many instances, they yet
lacked nothing of elf.confidence which
properly belongs only to the greatest
genius and the highest character. Beau
regard and Bragg are types Of the leaders
who unfurled the Confederate flag, and
baptized its cause in the first blood of civil
war. Their spirit prevailed in the rebel
ranks during all the early part of the war,
and ran riot in the rebel press and through
every rebel community.
THE appearance of an almost unknown
Union commander at Fort Donelson gave
a severe shock to Confederate confidence
The thief Floyd and his fellow, Pillow,
skulked away from that fight, and left
Buckner to make an ignonimous surren-
der. From that day the rebel cause ex-
perienced course of terrible reverses.
From Pittsburgh Landing to the Wilder
ness series of great battles steadily dis
played the superiority of Northern re-
sources. The most defiant braves of Sc
cession were sobered, and the proudest
soldiers of the South humiliated, while the
rabble of braggarts was whipped out of
the contest. Lee surrendered the most
thoroughly worsted forces ever kept to-
gether in the field, and long before neces-
sity compelled his pride to yield hope had
vanished out of the Confederacy. The
last efforts of Davis and his commanders
were made with the most wicked disre-
gard of inevitable fate, an objectionable
sacrifice of life in the hopeless defence of
lost cause.
At the moment of final defeat, when
Grant and Sherman and Thomas had con-
cluded the bloody business of suppressing
armed rebellion, the South was wholly
subdued. The feeling everywhere pre-
vailed that the cause of the Confederacy,
everything for which the war had been
made, was forever lost. No task was ever
more efectually accomplished than that
from which Grant and his Generals rested
when Lee laid down the arms of the Con-
federacy. The capture of Davis, a fugi-
tive disguised as an old woman, fleeing
the country which he had attempted to
govern and failed to defend, was but type
of the complete humiliation of the South.
To escape in any way whatever, the pen
alties of the rebellion, was the utmost am
bition of all classes. The men who had
risen like bullies, and made war like
butchers, hoped only to sneak away, or to
purchase existence on their own soil by
abject submission. The cause of the
the South, including everything for which
it had plotted and fought, was by un1ver-
sal confession a lost cause" A just gov
ernment, from the day of Lees surrender,
an administration faithful to the victor
ious nation, would have settled the results
of the contest almost at once, and secured
all the great fruits of the war, consigning
the cause of the rebellion to burial with
out hope of resurrectirn.
But Andrew johnson did not consult
the supreme law of justice i'll forming his
policy of reconstruction. He was not
faithful to the victorious nation. He took
no pains to secure the fruits of the war.
On the other hand, he was at the greatest
pains to devise release for subdued rebels,
and to invite them to lift up their heads.
He inaugurated policy which could not
but undo, with the rebel population, the
last and most important work of the war.
And by long course of desperate resis-
lance to the national will, he did all that
a disloyal President could dc to inspire in
the friends of the "lost cause an expec-
tation of still effecting some OF the leading
objects of the rebellion.
This expectation became irrepressible
with the success of the Ku-Klux wing OF
the Democracy in the Tammany Conven-
ton. When Wade Hampton and Vallan-
digham had triumphed in the nomination
of Seymour and Blair, the rebel spirit
was itself again, and if it were possible
for Ku-Klux Democracy to elect Presi-
dent, and wrest from a victorious nation
the control of its affairs, the "lost cause"
would be the winner after ALL
1t is just this which an overwhelming
majority of the country intend to prevent
by making General Grant President. 1t
was when Grant crossed the path of the
Confederates that their cause received its
first severe humiliation. He, above all
others, reduced it to abject submission.
It's final surrender was into his hands.
And he has probably done more than any
other individual to check the policy of
Andrew johnson and maintain the cause
of the Union against surviving rebellion.
1t is fit that he should complete the work
in which he has already played 80 large
part, and it is the just intention of the
nation that he shall do this. 1t was an
irreversible decree which went forth when
our millions poured out their blood and
treasure, that the rebel cause should die.
The ban of civilization and the curse of
the American people are on it, and it must
and shall remain "the lost cause. ."-Chi-
eago Tribune.
EY- The New York S,tn independently
says: "Seymour and Blair have to-day
not single chance of success; and the
whole power of the Democratic party,
but now 80 proud and SO confident, will
of necessity presently be concentrated up
on desperate effort to save the State of
New York, where year since their ma
jority rose to $4,000"
MATRIMONIAL advertisements have en-
tirely disappeared from the Leipsic (Sax-
ony) papers Recently, young man who
had published in the newspapers adver-
tisements in which he had requested young
ladies who wished to marry him to cor
respond with him, was sentenced to three
years imprisonment in the penitentiary
A