Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1876-02-14
Daily Nsnnebtt Foarnat
AUG u 81 A.
~oNDAY MORNING. Feb IA. 1879.
rHIyK OF IT-NORTHERv MEN ARE
Traitors WHO PUT DOWN TIE RE-


BILLION.
So saw the Southern leaders, aud so they
said from the first. But a rebellion of such
unparalleled malignity as that Of the late
slave States, which caused the death ant
mutilation Of more than half a million o
men. must have its proper place in histo
~. The Southern rebellion seems of un
ending duration; and although the crime
itself has an imperishable history the SUI
viving leaders who have received amnes
II, and therefore immunity, have used il
to try to shuttle off the odum Of what they
have done and what they are. Southern
rebels who talk loudly to-day are the
creatures of the grace of the republican
party. They would not be traitorous now
If it were not for the lenient Legislation Of
q republican Congress found upon the
statute book; and all the bombast and
rhodomontade giving history the lie in the
face of the records, and all the vaunts OF
men who either skulked or fought in the
rebel ranks. can never clothe them with
political honor, or make them otherwise
than what they are-very ungrateful
though forgiven rebels.
1t is an old trick of the Southern leaders
to misrepresent. The old slave South was
not learned community. Book-learning
and slave-breeding and buying did not har-
monte. Yet. relying on the general ig-
norance Of the people of the Southern
States the rebel leaders thought themselves
quite safe in demonstrating that the rebel
armies and their sympathizers were the
very pink Of loyalty, while the Northern
scum and mudsills' that fought to save the
Union, and did so, were traitors of the
blacklist dye. The revival of this language
by prominent Southern orators and writ
ers Is not indiscretiou. A whole regiment
of Southern and Northern democrats might
labor with verbose Southern fire-eater.
on the eve of speech, to say nothing that
would compromise him or his friends, but
they would fail. If he is SO gifted that
whenever he initiates his lungs he must ut
ter treason, why, it is as natural as breath
ing; and you must stop the fire-eatei's
breath before you can induce him to aban-
don disloyalty. When Mr.. Segar was a
candidate for Congress from Virginia
while the rebellion was raging, he ad-
dressed an audience on the 3lst of May,
1862, at Portsmouth. in that State, and is
reported TO have said with some surprise :
Whose mighty sin is iii Our secession friends
say it rests upon US, the Union men--that we who
have stood by the stars and stripes are responsible
that BY certain sacred principle of State rights
We ought to have followed our State into seces-
sion, or whithersoever else she called us-that we
are traitors because we wonld not do it-and that
BY not making common cause against the vile
Yankee we were playing into hands Of the enc
mics ofthe South, and that thus we are response
bic for this ruinous war. l am here to deny the
charge, and to disprove it. No part of the noun
famous guilt OF breaking up our glorious Union is
ours. We are not traitors. / have been so de-
nounced . thousand times, but l VOW l arm no
traitor. The treason is theirs, who by secession,
have thrown down the pillars of the American
Union; and their treason is a double one-treason
to their State and treason to the supreme Govern
ment Of the Union"
This language was spoken in 1862, and
every word Of It was true. But the lead
ers of the rebellion must have been per-
suaded that the ignorant democratic com
munities they addressed in the South could
not distinguish the truth of the case; that
1t was treason to originate rebellion such
as theirs, and that they were traitors who
supported it; while their intellects were
SO blind and stolid that they could neither
see nor appreciate the patriotic impulse OF
loyalty which summoned into the ranks
of the Federal armies the men of the
put down the rebellion. and preserved the
Union which they aimed at destroying.
We next summon as witness the
Southern Magazine, the official organ OF
the Southern Historical Society, which is
rebel. and since amnesty almost every
thing in the democratic States South is
rebel. This magazine is very dainty
handed affair. 1t had not soiled its pen 10y
discussing parties or politics, yet it had
kept its eye open without winking upon
both. Its delicate readers were expected
10 rctlrc 10 tnelr UOuuOlTs, anu IcallLe tnat
its intellectual department was only fitted
for "the hours of LEISURE" AS if the demo-
Gratis South any day would not find more
leisure for the Indulgence of unmanly
treason than for honest and industrious
loyalty! The great editorial effort of this
magazine was published in December,
1874, after the elections of amnestied reb-
els had injected into the House of Repre-
sentatives the Confederate element now
there. The editorial giant who purrs as
ne writes, with his claws concealed in a
velvety hand mo larger than a lady's.
and, who must have been raised in
the cell of Jesuit, where no superhu
Gus truth is ever fond lying about
and who would deny verbally, perhaps
what he wrote when the effect of it shall
be brought to his notice-that genial and
gentle leader of rebel thought in the South
ern Magazine put forward what we will
- han lat ~;