The Findlay Jeffersonian. [volume] (Findlay, Hancock County, Ohio) 1870-1881, 1876-02-18
sAisreHanenus.
THE NORTH AND SOUTH.

| nor the natural and Just desire OF recon-
ciliation, nor the extravagancies and Of
fenses of the colored voters of the
Southern States, nor the bland and
smooth oratory of the Southern Demo-
cratic politicians, nor the crafty declara-
tions of NorthernDemocr politicians,
that the only danger of the country is
the tendency to national Capitalization,
nor the cry that by-gones should be by
| cones, and that the Centennial year is
the accepted time for national harmony,
should cause any man to forget that the
Democratic party is now what it has
been for many years-the political Or
ganization of those who aimed to de-
stroy the national Union and govern
meDt for the basest and most revolving
of purposes, and who still declare that
their views, except as to the practical
bility of sece ession, remain unchanged.
There are honorable men in the late
Confederate States who sustained the
war against the Union and who are now
honestly and earnestly anxious to do all
their duty as citizens of the Union; but
the great controlling public opinion of
those States is necessarily unenlighten-
ed. Slavery was always and most truly
denounced as a curse to the master class
not less than foul wrong to the victim.
1t necessarily prohibited intelligence.
1t discouraged schools. 1t cherished To-
cal prejudices, and fostered jealousy and
hatred of strangers. Moreover, it was
system of outrage and violence. The
pictures of life in those States, drawn
by Mr.. Olmstead, in his vivid and inval-
liable series of works published just be-
fore the war, reveal a social condition
which is not surprising under the cir
cumstances, but which is not the less
lamentable. The ignorance, the sqnalor,
the shiftlessness, the seni-barbarism,
were the inevitable result of slavery,
and they were only more strongly EN-
phasized by the wasteful profusion and
the aristocratic but not modern and
wholly un-American tone of the great
slave owners
This last class. the planting interest,
constituted what was known as the
South, and it furnished the leaders and
the policy of the Democratic party, CIV
ing its followers in the Northern States
place and plunder in return for the un-
varying servile pandering to the desires
of the slave interest, Even Southern
men and slave holders sometimes scorned
to vote for the Infamous propositions
which Northern Democrats supported
without wincing. From 1920 to 1860, a
period of forty years, our politics, under
the guise of a contest between the Dem
ocratic and Wing, and the Democratic
and Republican parties, became gradu-
ally conflict between the North and
South.
The American idea of liberty, progress,
equal rights, universal education, mo
rality, and intelligence, ruled the politics
of the Northern States; the old principle
of caste, social and industrial injustice,
with consequent slavery, ignorance, in
tense provincialism, inequality of con-
dition, political and moral siagnation,
swayed those of the Southern States
The words North and South acquired
distinctive and perfectly Ineligible
significance. The South was unit for
the Democratic party-a unit because
even tine expression of other opinions
was at last not allowed, and to profess
Republicanism was to invite assault and
murder. The Southern States were alb
solutely terrorized by the slave interest,
and in half the Union an American who
honestly held and maintai ned the doc
trines of the Declaration of Independ-
ence was constantly exposed to insult,
and was often in danger of his life.
In such views, under such influences
and traditions, such fierce preiudices and
passions, the present generation of active
citizens in those States was carefully
bred. They were trained to hate the
Union as their oppressor, and to despise
the Yankee, or Northerner, as the mean
est of mankind. They honestly believed
that their States were sovereign" that
the Union was partnership in which
they were being worsted by partners as
cowardly as they were knavish, and that
those partners would not dare seriously
To 4. <.f
these views they were encouraged by
their Northern lackeys. They believed,
as Franklin Pierce told them, that the
struggle, if there were any, would be in
Northern streets They supposed, when
Fernando Wood lamented that he could
not send them arms with which to shoot
down inso!ent Yankees, that he spoke
for Northern Democratic official author
tiles. In Congress the South had tram
pied upon fundamental constitutional
rights, upon the right of petition, upon
the freedom of debate. A few Northern
Representatives upon the floor of the
House had maintained the plainest con-
stitutional principles at the muzzie of
Southern pistols. Democrats aequieseed,
Wings were cowed, and during that tre-
mendous time two or three men only
fully represented the unquailing and
resistless might and purpose oftheNorth,
which the North itself did not then sus-
pect. Chief among them was John
Quincy Adams, Charles Sumner, and
Joshua Giddings.
The conflict passed from Congress to
the field. The South was brave, persist
ent, daring. 1t suffered in every vein.
1t bled at every pore. Families were
desc a ed. Fortunes were ruined. During
four years every energy and resource was
strained to the utmost, and the South
yielded only when it could fight 10 lon
ger. 1t yielded, and turned from the
battlefield to find its social and ind astrial