The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1878-08-27
Anderson in the War.

Gen. Anderson addressed the Greenbackers
and Democrats of Gorham on Saturday even
ing last. In the course of his speech he
complained that the PRESS had charged him
with disloyalty during the war of the Rebel
lion. He challenged the PRESS to name the
time when ever he had denied the right of
the Government to reunite the country"
This challenge puts upon the PRESS the un-
pleasant necessity of saying some things
which otherwise would not have been said.
In meeting this challenge we shall so far as
possible confine ourselves to quotations from
Gen. Anderson's own words or statements
of his acts with only such comment as is
absolutely necessary to explain the circum-
stances.
In the first place, it is matter of COM
mon knowledge to all persons in Portland
and vicinity who were extant during the
war that Gen. Anderson was an extreme
Southern sympathizer before the outbreak Of
the war and that his Southern feeling became
intensified as the contest progressed; that he
was in the constant habit Of making violent
expressions against the Union army, and that
all he said and did in reference to the war
tended to the encouragement of the South
and the Encouragement of the North from
beginning to end.
But it is not necessary to appeal to COM
mon knowledge of the general features of his
attitude, for Gen. Anderson then as now was
ready of speech and freed his mind in public
addresses, few of which were reported and
embalmed on printed pages. From these we
take some extracts which will prove interest
ing reading. Of course his ntterances in
these speeches are much milder than those
to which he gave vent in private discourse,
but there is that in them which will make
the blood to boil with indignation in the
veins of every man who ever had any sympa-
thy with his country in its struggle against
armed rebellion.
To begin no farther back than 1862, Gen.
Anderson in the Dana Democratic Conven-
tion of that year made speech, reported in
the PRESS the next day, in which he declared
that the war was unnecessary and unjust,
that there was point beyond which forbear-
ance ceased to be virtue, that il the Union
men dared to carry out their threats they
would find a spirit in the North more fearful
than Southern hordes, that there were men
in the Convention who would vlndicate the
laws for themselves, and if the Administra-
ton did not cease its unconstitutional acts
there would be fearful retribution.
The correctness of the above renort being
questioned the PRESS published the following
extract from the report of the speech given
by that violent Copperhead journal, the
Boston Courier, and approvingly reprinted
by the Maine Democrat, the Democratic
organ in York County:
"The Democratic party of Maine will never be
muzzled. They will express their opinions to the
course of the Administration which in their opinion
has proved false to the Constitution which has taken
away the dearest rights OF American citizens sus-
pended, the writ of habeas corpxs, entered houses
without any color of law, in repeated violation of
the Constitution from the time they were installed
at Washington till the present day. Such an Ad-
ministration deserves to be denounced by the Demo-
cracy of the State of Maine And, gentlemen, nc
order Of Secretary Stanton will shut my mouth from
so denouncing such an Administration. say, gentle
men, that the Administration has been false to its
oath of office, false to the Constitution and the laws
say that this whole acar is ooing to the Adminisra
tion, and the men that placed it in poayer; that it
arose from them; that they brought en the rar by