Green-Mountain freeman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1844-1884, 1879-06-18
Chr freemau.
Southern Brigadiers.

EDITOR FREEMAN AS resident of the
South for thirteen years before the war
driven out in 1861 for my Union senti-
ments-I don't think am likely to be very
much preiudiced in favor of people who
thus reduced me from comfort to poverty.
The first vote ever threw was for anti
slavery delegates to the Kentucky consti-
tutional convention of 1858. l cannot,
however, sympathize with the prevailing
fear of " southern brigadiers," and am
glad to see the following utterances of one
of the bravest of our Union brigadiers
General and Ex-Governor Chamberlain oi
Maine, now president of Bowdoin college
They are from a Decoration day oration
delivered at Lewiston:
"Local self-government and state rights
are as dear to the north as to the south
and the prestige of the nation as useful tc
the south as to the north. So far rs we
were concerned, the war was an act oi
defence by the people for the people
against the hostile acts of state organiza-
tions pretending TO be supreme In this
country, pretending that it was m the
power of any of them to say that hence
forth there should be no more people OF
the United States. That is what it was
exactly, and we accepted the issue and
settled it. We were not trying to drive Il
foreign foe out of the country. We were
irving to bring back an alienated and mis-
taken friend into an allegiance he had
rashly and blindly repudiatcd. We were
fighting to compel the rebellious states to
do their duty under the constitution, to
come back into congress again and to take
part in making laws and regulating the
course of this people in its grand work in
this broad land and among the nations OF
the earth. Is it not folly, is it not babyish
weakness 10 complain that the states are
back again in congress and that they have
sent there such representatives as they
must naturally chooseP We send our best
minds to congress, of course, to manage
the vital interests OF our country. Why
should not they send their best minds? If,
gentlemen, we did not want the rebel gen
erals there, what did we remove their dis
abilities for? If we did not want the
south to have an increased majority in the
electoral vote or in congress, why did we
not think of that when by giving the en-
franchised slave the ballot, we thereby
added to the southern strength thirty-live
electoral and representative votes? Who
ever did that should not stultfy himself by
whining about it, or setting up pow
WOW over it, and trying to make the peo.
pie think that the great war has not settled
something. There are great questions
that must be met-must be discussed, must
be honorably studied and fairly stated and
wisely adjusted. There will be bad men
and good in Congress and out, bad meas,
ures and good, bad theories and good: 1t
is the task of craftsmanship and manhood
to deal with existing evils, to take things
MS they are and make them what they
ought to be, and this should be done under
the constitution and through the laws and
by all the machinery of government con-
nected, expressly TO avoid the appeal to
brute passion and brute force. That s
what constitutions, and laws, and courts
and congresses, and ballot boxes are for. "