New national era. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1870-1874, 1872-10-17

ana unDroken an integrity as 1t possessed
before the war. Does any one disapproye
OF this restoration and desire to return to
the broken and dishevelled condition from
which we have just escaped?
Is any large body of men dissatisfied with
the results of the war? Those results were
the emancipation of the blacks, without
money and without price, their subsequent
enlranchisement as citizens, and the en-
powerlng OF Congress to legislate for the
enforcement OF those acts. All parties pre-.
tend TEL to ac9ulesce in the fact accomplished.
The Republicans do, for it is their work
the Liberals do, for it was also their worI
ana me Democrats accept the Liberals.
Mr.. Greeley, in one speech at Cincinnati
said that slavery is dead, and that the
nation abides forever in the sum and sinh.
stance of the verdict pronounced through
the issues of our great contest. There is
no longer question, there can never again
arse question rs to the perpetuity of the
Union. The apple of discord, the only
thing that ever made any American hostile
TO his own country and Constitution, has
utterly persisted. Henceforih the American
Union abides forever, grounded in the affec.
uons, the necessities, and in the fervent
devotion OF the whole American people"
Again, IN his Pittsburg speech, he declared
that " the men of the South had done every
thing that had been asked of them, and were
as good Republicans rs the best. They
talk about rebels and traitors! Fellow.
citizens, are we never to be done with this?
We demanded of our adversaries in the
great civil war that they surrender their
arms and so to their homes. They surren-
dered them. We demanded that they aban-
don slavery, and they abandoned slavery.
We demanded that they enfranchise the
blacks, and the blacks are enfranchised.
We demanded that they stipulate the
emancipated slaves shall not be paid for,
and that the rebel debt shall never be paid
by the Government or by the State, and
they asSented to that. n EVERYTHING
has been done that we asked, everything
has been conceded, and still they tell us,
: We want them to repent Have they not
brought forth works mete for repentance?
and thus coming together in solemn con.
vention the representatives of that Southern
people have given their assent to the plat
form of the Cincinnati Convention, which
was the most intense, the most complete,
Republican document that had ever been
presented by any national convention what
ever"
This is not strictly accurate, according to
history but take it so for the nonce, and
we ask ;: What remains to be reconeiled?
The victorious party has made its demands,
IN order to secure the future, and those de-
mands are conceded all sides are agreed;
no apple of discord survives; but, in that
case, why all this palaver about reconcilia-
ton, fraternity, and peace? The Union is
saved; slavery is abolished liberty is uni
versal order reigns everywhere, save where
it is broken by some indiscreet Ku-Klux;)
citizens OF all sorts may travel everywhere
unmoested; the exchanges of commerce
and industry are unfettered /; opinion is alb
solutely free; and yet-we are told-an en-.
tire revolution of the Government and re-
versal of parties are necessary to set things
right. General Grant must be deposed,
though he has been one of the main instru-
ments of the stupendous changes described;
the party that has supported him in the
work must be put out of power; and Mr..
Greeley, who sustained General Grant and
that party up to within recent period, must
be chosen President, in order that he,
backed by a party that has throughout op-
posed these beneficent changes, may get in
to office. The bitterness, strife, enmity, in
justice, and prescription, which exist only,
if they exist at all, as an individual senti-
ment, will continue to flourish, unless that
pdttiSuidi Win lOlIOW-
ers, are allowed to take the reins and drive
jim their own fashion. We must surrender
the financial interests of the nation, vast
and vital as they are: we must surren-
der its foreign relations, in which often the
question of peace and war hangs by a thread
upon the prudence, discretion, and wisdom
of the person charged with their manage
ment; we must surrender our whole domes-
tic legislation, on which momentous conse.
quences not unfrequently depend-to new
and untried hands, to hands, perhaps, that
were recently raised in violent resistance to
the very being of the Republic, that few
sullep or bigoted spirits, on either side a
certain line, may be brought together in
amity.
Was any appeal ever more preposterous
The vast majority of the Northern people
have conducted themselves since the war
with spirit of magnanimity and kindness
that will be the marvel of history. Com
pared with the conduct of other nations, in
parallel cases, their treatment of the au-
thors of the civil war, and of the nameless
horrors by which it was attended, is the
most sublime example of Christian forgive
ness and goodness that has yet been re-
corded in the annals of our race. They
have INDUCED in no resentments or re-
gained by the war should be secured against
reversal or overthrow. In the means
adopted to arrive at the end they may have
made mistakes their legislative expedients
may not have been wise in every particular,
but they have never been animated by any
other feeling than that of solictude for the
public good, and a proper forecast of future
contingencies. Blood, exile, prescription,
outlawry-the scaffold and the penal colony
which are the usual results at the close of
civil wars, have never entered into their
thoughts; but from the beginning they felt,
what tue soldiers, who of all our people are
most likely to retain the prejudices and
passions of the conflict, resolved the other
day at Pittsburg, that " We cherish no spirit
of revenge toward our fellow citizens of the
South. The magnanimity of our late Com.
mander in Chief on the field of Appomat-
tox was sufficient pledge of the Union
army that the 'bloody chasm of the war
was closed, and with malice toward none,
but with charity to all, we extend the right
hand of fellowship to all those who accept
in good faith the results of the war, and
who will extend to every American citizen,
of whatever race or color, the rights which
are solemnly guaranteed by the Constitu-
ton of the United States and the laws made
freely and irrevocably guaranteed, has been
the sole condition of universal and I'M
remembering peace.
We have read Mr.. Greeley's speeches
attentively, and. so far as we can see, his
complaints are reduced to the single point
that amnesty has not yet been extended to
all offenders. A few hundred of them are
still beyond the pale. 1t is, no doubt, to be
regretted that it is so and the objection is
good one against the Congress so far as it
is responsible. General Grant, rejecting the
opinions of his party, has never ceased to
direct it's attention to the subject. No words
could have been palmer, more emphatic, or
more urgent than those in which he has