The Daily state journal. [volume] (Alexandria, Va.) 1868-1874, 1873-09-22


charge, brought against Colonel Hughes by
the Bourbon party and its journals is, that,
in 1861, he was an advocate of slavery,
violent state-rights man, secessionist,
and the writer of most effective editorials
advocating all these abominable heresies.
Admit that the charge is true, land We do
admit it, and what does it all amount to !?
The question with us is, not what Ro.
W. Hughes was in 1861, or through the
four years Of our terrible civil strife, but
what he is noao. We concedo that he was
honest then, and that concession involves
the whole question of his honesty OF the
present time. st. Paul went on his way to
Damascus, breathing out threatenings and
slaughter against all Christians in that city,
but he met with little incident on his
journey which changed his entire future as
AMMAN. Before he left Jerusalem he was
honestly a reviler Of the Christian faith !:
before he got to Damascus he was another
sort of man entirely. Was he any less
honest as Christian for having been scru-
pulously honest as Jew? The sacred
record does not SO teach. Hf
Colonel Hughes changed from a SECESSION
list ff you please to Unionist, for the rea-
son that great light fell upon him as he
journeyed from the one political Mecca to the
other; but do these Conservative Pharlsees
object to the change? Do they not pro-
TESS to have changed themselves? Have
they not changed, and that in more
miraculous and unaccountablc manner
than did st. Paul, when he was on his
way to Damascus? The only difference
is, that when the "noblest Roman of them
alp las st. Paul was esteemeO was once
converted, he stayed converted. He wasn't
profeSsed Christian one day, and teariaq
Rabbin the neat! And precisely here, and
in this particular, is where Colonel Hughes
does not suit our Virginia Conservatives.
They are Greeley Unionists, with an awful
feeling of repentance for their secession
sins, to-day, and the tearingest kind of
unrepentant rebels and White-Sulphur-
Springs-Jeff- Davis Democrats tomorrow.
They can't stay converted to the faith Of
Unonism single hour, and they perfectly
abhor the man who can. Hence their hate
for Colonel Hughes, who when he hon
estly rcnounces one faith, just as honestly
accepts another. ~ ~
Colonel Hughes, we admit, has changed,
and the world has changed-is continually
changing-sometime for the worse, gene
rally for the better. A genuine rebel
against Republican form of government
can never change for the worse. Ii he
changes at all, it must be for the better.
This automatic truth don't seem to get
through Conservative hair. They have
changed so often and so precipitately in
political emergencies, that they don't stay
changed long enough to repair mosquito
bite. They are changing, in fact, almost
constantly, and may be said to be as unsta-
BILE as the east wind. They get on to a
Republican platform to-day and off to-
morrow. They swear by the Fourteenth
and Fifteenth amendments in one breath,
and spew the whole constitution out Of
their mouths in the next. Even the conveu-
ton which nominated General Kemper We'd
with the Republican party in making a
Republican platform, and yet the General
no sooner gets on the stump than he kicks
the whole thing over as sham, double
tongued imposition practiced by the party
nominating him. All this accords beauti-
fully and admirably with the conceits,
prejudices, whims, volatility and passion
OF the Conservative party.
The real question at issue, if this thing
OF political change can be said to rise to the
magnitude Of an issue, is not what Mr..
Hughes, or Mr.. Kemper, or Mr.. Wise, or
Extra-Billy Smith, or the next man who has
changed, may have thought, said, written,
or otherwise expressed, six, eight, or ten
years ago; but what they accept to-day as
n living creed--as their abiding faith and
principle of action, 1t is enough for the
past to bury its own dead, or shovel its
own folles out of sight. IL secession,
slavery, war, death, famine, and general
slaughter, and destruction of property, are
things to be encouraged in principle or
theory of action, then General Kemper is
right and Colonel Hughes wrong. If
renewal of the bloody conflict which so
terribly scourged Virginia from 1861 to
1865 be desirable, then every Viginlan
should vote for the secession leaders,
Kemper and Withers. If their war record
and steady adherence TO their secession
sentiments and principles is what the peo-
pie Of this state want, then Colonel
Hughes claims should be ignored, and
the Conservative ticket elected. This is
reducing the thing right down to the gist
of the matter. 1t is the whole question
in nutshell, and so simply shaped that
three-year-old youngster can thoroughly
comprehend and understand it.
Those in favor Of peace, prosperity,
happiness, stability of government, and the