The Somerset press. [volume] (Somerset, Ohio) 1873-1977, 1875-03-12

power: and 1t would then De seen now
long before Republican Congress, when
under Section 5. Article l, as smaller
number than majority, it should ad
journ from day to day and attempt to
compel the attendance of absent mem
bers, would he dispersed by the armed
forces created for Democratic ends.
The White League roster to-day is an
immature muster-rol of the new army
of 1877. Every Southern State is to be
violently captured at the polls in No
vember, '76, and in the event of escape
then, will find its vote wither under a
Democratic exception TO its admission
in the Congressional count As the Re-
publican Senate by its contumacy might
quicken a wholesome public sentiment
against the Democratic plot, the utility
appears of an armed force to daunt that
sentiment. The Democracy would af-
firm itself the custodian of the Govern
ment, employ every engine to maintain
its ward, and the Union would discover
that the rebellion it stunned in '65 in
one section had leaped to its nimble
feet, mastered both sections, and was sit
ting in the legislative and executive
chairs to enact and execute laws against
all loyal recusants as rebels. Nay, it is
gravely charged that in the late war the
South alone was guiltless of treason.
The New Orleans Monthly Review,
the only magazine in the entire South,
declares in its last number under the
query, "Were the Confederates guilty
of trrason?" as follows:
"The act of withdrawal of the seeding
States was as solemn, formal and volun-
tary, in every respect, as was their origi-
nal accession to the Union, and, in both
instances, was accomplished by virtue
of their sovereignty, which has never,
even to this moment, been surrendered.
The result of their secession was not on
ly that the Union of the States was sun
dered, but the Government overthrown,
and the Constitution rendered inopera-
tive, and ceased to be obligatory upon
any of the States. Congress could not
longer legally convene under the pro-
visions of that instrument, its war-mak-
ing power, and all its functions were
gone, and no United States, with its ex-
ecutive, legislative and judicial depart
ments Of government any longer existed,
against which treason, the offense under
consideration, could be committed.
"The truth is. the war was a war be-
tween the masses of people who compos-
ed the Northern States on one side, ac-
ting without right and without the au-
thority of legitimately organized gov
ernment, and the Contederately organ
lied government, and the Confederate
States, with a regular government,
against which as sovereign power treason
could be committed on the other side.
/ The object of the war was to overthrow
| the sovereignty of the Southern States
and reduce them to the condition of con
quered provinces, which the assailants
were able to accomplish against all prin-
ciples of American right by the force Of
overwhelming numbers. This was trea-
son to the Southern States, and a viola
tion of their rights as sovereign COM
munities, nor was the treason diminish
ed by the fact that, in consequence of
their defeat, they we're unable to punish
the treason"
1t is only to literary constituency
wholly morbid, and whose
SPLEEN Is IT'S SOLE LOGIC AND con-
SCIENCE,
That such villainous suggestions
could be welcome; yet the serial is a
| textbook to the high-toned Southron,
its editor, Whitaker, having assiduously
| apologized here for his inadvertent
birth in Massachusetts, until the South
ron condescends to hold him blameless
BY reason of his minority at that period.
l have cautiously restrained my pen
thus far lest | might be esteemed an
alarmist, with ears pricked at any shad-
ow; but when | have reason to believe
that deep and deadly mine, already
laid in the South, has been pushed
northward, and that Tammany lends
her spades to the project; when the mis-
chievous enmity here. though unable al
times to resist its instinct for violence
calms to what it itself conceives to be a
marvellous show of patience, yet abates
none of its pent fury when the South
ern Democrat believes rebellion a right
not a crime, and sees he must recruit his
Northern partisan, who was idle in the
late war, and thus remove the issue out
of section into a union; when the
Nori hern leader, gnawing his knuckles
in his hunger for power, consents in the
: name of Democracy to surrender him
self again as before 1860, and at this
hour commends the violent erection in
1872 of sham Executive and LegIsla,
ture in Louisiana by the Southern ele
ment that Will seek to erect in 1877 g
sham National Executive and Congress
is it not about time that the souls Of
loyal men through the country were
, aroused to the new peril of the Repub
lie, saved but ten years ago from the
same want on hands? In 1860 few al
the North credited the menace of the
revolution. hence it cost four years and
infinite waste to arrest the flames thai
crept and grew from the fist campfire
as if the country were but wild prair-
lie. Let not our prescience wilfully
close its lids now, for the danger is fal
greater than in 1860.
The passion that leaped into armoi
then is envenomed now with chagrin al
its fruitless sacrifices, but has so dis
/, ciplined its hate as deliberately to hus.
band every resource for revenge. II
staked it's all for power in the pomp Of
war; it will next approach by stealth SC
as to wrest the power before alarm can
rally loyal men to save it; then it will
summon it's impatient legions to snccor
the usurpation, improvised out of the
electoral vote, or through the failure to
count it. The rebel Generals will first
make a quiet reconnaissance as Con-
gressmen, then whip out their uniforms
from their portmanteaus, and sound the
peal Of double quick" to the Demo-
cracv northward and southwark of the
Capitol. The danger of the cheat will
be largely in the fact that the Southern
Democracy will assume no longer to
combat the General Government, but to
be especially charged with its mainten-
ance, and that the Northern Democracy,
which has slavishly declined to rebuke
assaults upon Republican Common
wealths and hourly fragrant violations
of law at the South, from mere pee