The Kenosha telegraph. [volume] (Kenosha, Wis.) 1860-1888, 1879-09-18
OUR WASHINGTON LETTER.
WASHINGTON, Sept. 18th, 1879.

w AoHINGION, Oept. l4tu, 1861.
MIR. EDITOR that I cam
not at this time furnish your readers
with any more interesting reading mat
ter thar Vice-President Wheeler's
speech at the Republican State Conven-
ton held at Saratoga on the Sd inst. I
quote largely from it.
Il had the honor to preside over the
Republican State Convention twenty
years ago, when the slave power, hay
ing the Constitution, the laws, the Ex-
ecutive, Congress and the Courts in
complete domination, was nevertheless,
demanding for its peculiar interest
rights and protection without the pale
Of the Constitution; was secretly or
ganizing vast conspiracy against the
integrity of the Union, and kindling
the flames Of the ruthless civil war
which, within TIVE years thereafter.
opened it's dread drama in Charleston
h;trbor in the glare of eleven batteries
of artillery, which hurled their iron
bolts upon one small seige-Worn COM
pany OF United States troops, whom
the Government, in its earnest desire
to avoid hostile demonstrations, was
endeav0ring to feed and not to rein
force. It was at Sumter that the ex
pertinent Of starving The Government
was initiated, with repet1tions at An
dcrs onville and other places OF historic
brutality, and more recently, at Wash
ington at the late extra session of Con-
gress.
I came to this position again in 1872.
The curtain had then fallen upon the
bloody drama opened ut Charleston
The long, weary, battling years that
had interviewed had drifted into the
dead past The flag had been lifted up
from its humiliation at Sumter, and
again inyiolate and supreme, proclaim
ed the National Sovereignty, from the
Potomac to the Rio Grande A half
million OF the defenders of that Sover-
eighty were sleeping III soldiers graves.
The blood Of hundreds of battle-helds;
the cmblems Of mourning; the tears
in million of sacrifcial homes the
bereft, the desolate. the helpless, the
scared and the wasted, encountered
on every hand, attested the costllness
Of the sacrifices which had been made
for the National life. We then conf
IDENTITY believed that, by an immutable
law of the Supreme Ruler, such sacri-
ices had not been made in VAN; that
the Nations blood, the Nations tears
and the Nations treasures had found
compensation in the destruction of the
germ OF the fatal heresy of secession,
and in saving the grand framework of
our Government from falling into
wretched fragments. With immense
majorities in Congress and every
Northern State, and omnipotent to fix
the status of its defeated enemies, the
Government, with a magnanimity for
which the history of the world furnish
es no parallel, treating the contest as
one of principle and not of personal
hatred, and lifting itself above the low
level of a mere sectional triumph, had
condOned the crime of treason and re-
bellion and actually reinvested traitors
and rebels with the rights they had
forfeited, and made them equal partic-
ipants in the privileges they had inso-
lently cast off in their mad purpose to
destroy the National authority. This
magnanimity has been supplanted bv
every possible effort to inaugurate in
the Southern section of this country a
substantial era of reconciliation and
peace. Military garrisons have been
withdrawn, all alleged National inter-
ference heretofore complained Of. dis
continued, and, contrary to all political
precedent, appointments to office have
been given to those who a few wears
ago We're moving heaven and earth to
PROSTATE the Government and the Un-
ion.
To-day we are here confronting the
consequences Of the .magnanimity of
the Government, and of it's wasted and
despised efforts to conciliate it's late
armed assailants. In the light of re-
cent events, it is not hyperbole to in
quire, Was the surrender at Appomat-
tOX q Wrotchpd hollow truca na+obod