Nashville union and American. [volume] (Nashville, Tenn.) 1868-1875, 1872-07-17


great mass of those who have been misled
into rebellion, but punish the leaders as they
deserve, But who can accurately draw the
line between leaders and followers In the
4 PREMISES By what test shall they be dis
criminated9 60 Where Is you.
! toucletone OF leadership We know of
| none.
lrn'iNeT can we agree with those who would
| punish the original plotters Of secession,
| yet spare their ultimate and scarcely willing
converts. On the contrary, while We would
revive or inhame resentment against none
OF them, we feel far less antipathy to the
original upllolders OF 'the resolutions OF '98'
Ito the disciples of Calhoun and McDufhe
Ito the nulhfiers of 1892, and the State
Rights men of 1S50-than to the John Bells,
Humphrey Msfshslls and Alexander III. Ii.
StUartss who we've schooled in the national
faith, and who, In becoming disunionist and
rsbelss trampled on the professions Of life
time, and spufned the logic wherewith they
had SO often unanswerably demonstrated
that secession was treason
We consider Jefferson Davis this day
less culpable traitor than John Bell. But
we cannot believe it wise or well 70 take
the life Of any man who shall have submit
ted to the national authority. The execu-
ton of even one such would be felt as a
personal stigma by every one who had ever
aided the Rebel cause. Each would say to
himself 4 am as capable as he; we differ
only in that am deemed Of comparatively
little consequence A single Confederate
led out to execution wonld be evermore en-
shrined in million hearts as conspicuous |
y IT.
it would be wholesome or safe-we are sure |
II would not be magnanimous--to give the |
Overpowered diSloyalty of the South such a |
shrine. Would the throne of the House of /
Hanover stand more firmly il Charles Ed /
ward had been caught and executed after /
Cullodeu? Is Austrian domination in HuI- /
gary more stable to-day for the hanging of |
Macy Sander and his twelve compatriots /
after the surrender of Villages?
ave plead against passions certain to be
at this moment fierce and intolerant; but on |
our side are the ages and the voice of his
tory. We plead for restoration of the Union
against policy which would afford a mo-
mentary qualification at the cost of years of
perilous hale and bitterness.
"Those who invoke military execution
for the vanquished, or even for their leaders,
we suspect viii not generally be found
the few who have long been exposed to I'M
just odium as haters of the South, because
they abhorred slavery. And as to the long
and degraded 5lacks-so lately
the slaves, destined still to be neighbors,
and 1--WE trust) at no distant day the
fellow citizens Of the Southern whites-we
are sure that their voice, could 1t be anthem
tically uttered, would ring out decidedly,
on the side ofclemency-of hui
manity." -#I -
On the next day, / had some more in this
spirit, and On the 18th an elaborate leader
entitled: 'Peace-Punishment in the
course of which l said: --...
"The New York Times, doing injustice
10 its own sagacity, in a charact eristic
attempt TO sail between wind and |
water, says: 'Let US hang JEFF Davis
Davis and spare the rest We do !
not concur in the advice. Davis did not
levise nor instigate the rebellion; on the
contrary, he was one of the latest and most |
'eluctant of the notables of the cotton
States to renounce defnitively the Union.
Ills prominence is purely official and repre-
sentative: the DOLLY reason for hanging him
S that you therein condemn and stigmatise
more persons than in hanging any one else.
There is not an ex-Rebel in the WOrld-no
natter how penitent-who will not have
unpleasant sensations about the neck on
he day when the Coincidence President is
0 hang. And to what good end?
"We insist that this matter must not be
egarded in any narrow aspect? We are
most anxious to secure the assent of the
outh to emancipation; not that assent
which the condemned gives to being hung
Then he shakes hands with the ailer
nd thanks him for past acts of kind
less; but that hearty assent which
al only be won by magnanimity. Per
APPS the Rebels, as abody, would have
wen, even one year ago, as large and as
earty vote for hanging the writer OF this
rticle as any other man living; hence, it
lore especially seems to him important to
rove that the civilization based on free Ia
or is Of higher and humaner type than
nat based on slavery. We cannot realize
lat the qualification to enure to our friends !
ON the hanging of any one man, or fifty i
zen, should be allowed to outweigh this ]
On the following day wrote again: :
"We eDtTeat the President
romptly to do and dare in the cause of
The Southern mind is now ,
pen TO kindness, and may be msgnetically
Iiected by generosity. Let assurance at !
nee be given that there is to be general
mncsty and no general confiscation. This
none the less the dictate of wisdom, be-
luse it is also the dictate of mercy. What I
'e ask is, that the President say In effect, T
slavery having through rebellion, commits
ID suicide, let the North and the South
mite to bury the carcass, and then clasp +
ands across the grave.'"
The evening of that day witnessed that
lost appalling calamity, the murder of .
resident Lincoln, which seemed in an in 4
amt to curdle all the milk of human kind
ess in twenty millions of American breasts.
{ once insidious efforts were set on foot to !
i'm the fury thus engendered against me, !
ecause of my pertiaacious advocacy o! :
lercy to the Vanquished. CHANGING to en- !
er the clubhouse the next Saturday /
vening, received full broadside of your
cowls, ere we listened to a clerical ba-
angue intended to prove that Mr.. Lincoln
ad been providentially removed, because
f his notorious leauings towards clemeDcy, 4
D order to make way for a successor who :
7ould give the Rebels a full measure of !
ten Justice. | was soon made to cOmpre- 4
end that had no sympathizers-or none
Tho dared seem such-in your crowded as
emblage. And some maladroit admirer
aving few days afJerwarl, made the club !
present Of my portrait, its bare reception !
'as resisted in a speech from the chair /
Y your then President "a speech
those vigorous invectiye was justified y
Olely by my PleadingS for lenity to 3
ne Rebels. At once a concerted howl of de- &
and rage was sent up from every =
de against me by the little creatures whom
-O1 for comm ireor,rto 10 y,,,rnoca rnYTy, re