Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1875-06-11
SECESSION rs. PEcoNyTRUcTyoN.

''Ben" HILL OF Georgia, who VIII be III
the next House. and is sure to divide with
Lamar, of Mississippi, the leadership ofthe
Southern democrats. has uttered the Shib.
boleth of the confederate campaign. In
substance, he says: We, the coniederates
have abandoned secession, and you, the
North, must give up reconstruction.
No other words than these could be
found to more tersely express the whole
contest. The South abandons secession,
if they do, and we who conquered it are
to abandon liberty and hope of finally es-
tablshing republican equity and unity
In order that we may live at peace with
Ben Hill and his tribe. we are to sur
render That is what it means: nothing
less, and a great deal more. This same
orator and leader recently said that we
(tho South) mast be let alone, to control
our own labor i'll our own way One OF
his intimates, also Il reorganiZed leader OF
the conf, derate politicians, Governor
Smith, of Georgia, not long ago illustra
ted what was meant by "our own way
in saying that they could preserve their
plantation system and rebuild it on a
baronial plan. Sounding words. but hay-
inc an ominous meaning 1t means that
the laborer of the South is to be enslaved
to society there. While liominally free,
La j. tn he practically a Sprf
This is the whole OF it. We are coolly
asked to believe that the South gives up
secession. In that, Hill ialsiied. Seces-
sion was destroyed. The indssolubility
of the Union is sealed in the blood of hall
a million OF men, North and South, who
fell on one or the other side of the mad
attempt to destroy it. The South, as rep
resented by Hill and Lamar, jeff Davis
and Bob Toombs, gives up nothing. 1t
surrenders only because it must.
To-day their devotion to the doctrine of
State sovereignty is as extreme as
it was in 1860. Only zeal, therefore, is
tempered by the discretion our bayonets
have enforced. Other methods are to be
used. Other means are to be organized.
One of them is found in the systematic at
tempt that has been made since ku kluX-
ism proved terror which turned and
rended its coDtrivers, to make the loyal
people believe that reconstruction has
been breeder of corruption and the fe-
cund propagation of bad and barbaric GOV
eminent The object is self-evident. We
ought to give il up, as the South has given
up Secession. There might be something
in this, if the latter part of the proposition
was true. instead of being absolutely
false.
State sovereignty. as incucatcd South,
as sustained North by Eaton, Bayard,
Thurman, Allen, Hendricks d Co, leadsin-
evitably to dsntegration, secession, or the
support of a strong. scll-willed Chieitain
like Andrew jackson, who, to preserve
the national unity, will substitute his will
for law, his policy for the constitution,
and SO pave the way for the supremacy of
the Executive power, establishing the
one-man or autocratic idea for that bal
anced average of coordinate forces. which
is the most sagacious feature of our sys-
TEN.
That reconstruction which we are so
coolly asked to give up, means the reverse
of all this. In spite of the lapses and
errors which have arisen because the
plans adopted have been too lenient,
compromising too much with the
'Ben" Hill element, its result is
sure, in the creation of free labor,
equal citizenship. the broadening of edu-
cational opportunities, and the growth, if
slow. of all the complex features of a free
society. controlled by law equally made
and enforced. and moving forward order
lv towards the establishment of all the va
ried interests of republican civilization,
such as is seen around us, in the States
that conquered secession and have well
maintained reconstruction The Kepub-
Tic.