The National tribune., 1883-08-16
TRYING To Make BLACK White.

that hoary apologist for treason as reply
to q recent article by Judge Black, on the
secret history Of the secession movement.
Mr. Davis, it viii, be seen, still clings to the
views which he held in 1861. He still be-
lieyes, or pretends to believe, that the war
was precipitated by the overt act of the
North. He would have the country at this
late day to understand that he is as inno-
cent as lamb of any completely in the con-
spiracy to overthrow the Union. His inge-
NOUS Justification of history, indeed, is cal
culated to impress the public with the idea
that during all that memorable period when
the secessionists were perfecting their plans
and collecting the means with which to ac-
complish the overthrow Of the Union, he
(Mr. Davis was engaged in an heroic en-
deavor to arrange peaceful settlement of
the questions at issue between the States,
and, but for the evil counsel to which Presi-
dent Buchanan inclined his ear, would have
been successful. Had the Federal Govern
ment, in accordance with the request of the
South Carolina commissioners, amiably with
drawn its garrison from the Charleston forts,
Mr.. Davis is OF the opinion that an armed
conflict might have been avoided, and he is
the administration of Presidents Washing
ton and Adams local instructions in Penn
sylvania were suppressed by a simple call
upon the governors of the State to order out
the militia. His righteousness is truly
phenomenal, and it would appear from this
likening of the great conspiracy against the
Union, of which he.was the head and whose
ramifcations extended throughout all the
Southern States, to mere local conflict of
authority in Pennsylvania, that he regarded
the people of the North as quite as gullible
now as they were twenty years ago.
Mr. Davis, who, it is but charitable to
suppose, is now in his dotage, apparently
forgets that the doubt which hung about
the movements of,the secessionists in 1861
was long since cleared away, and that how
ever cunningly they may have employed
the mask of State rights to hide their in
tentions, there is no longer any question as
to their ultimate object. Their conspiracy
was aimed at the life of the Republic, and
IL. n II.
of the South Carolina commissioners and
evacuated the Charleston forts the practical
result of that act would simply have been to
have strengthened the hands of the rebels,
and given occasion for the invention of a
fresh pretext for the precipitation of actual
hostilities.
Mr. Davis and his co-conspirators, crazed
with political ambition, had determined to
found confederacy of their own, and we
may be sure that they would have stopped
at nothing to have secured their end. For
the ex-president of the Confederate govern
ment to claim at this late day that he was
ardently DESTROYS of effecting peaceful So
luton of the issues between the North and
South in 1861 is simply preposterous
There We're men in the South who were
sincerely attached to the Union and bitterly
opposed to the attempt to dissolve it, but
Mr.. Davis was not one OF them. He appeals
to the speech which he made in the Senate
of the United States early in 1861, as a proof
that he was then still loyal, but he must be
a person of very obtuse perceptions who
cannot see through that thin disguise of
reasonable sentiment.
How sharply that speech contrasts with
the eloquent appeal which the late Alexan-
der H. Stephens made to the Georgia con-
vention in the same month January, 1861,
to stand by the Union. lie said:
This step (secession) once taken can never be
recalled, and all the balefnl and whitening conse-
sequences that must follow (as they would seel
! will rest on the convention for all coming time
| When we and our posterity shall see our lovely
| South desolated by the Demon of War which this
act of yours will inevitably invite and call forth
| when our green fields of waving harvest shall be
/ trodden down by the muFderous soldiery the fiery
car of war sweeping over our land; our temples of
Justice laid in ashes all the horrors and desoIation
of war upon us; who but this convention will be
held responsible for it? and who but him who
shall have given his vote for this unwise and i'll
timed measure las honestly think and believed
shall be held to account for this suicidal act by the
present generation, and probably cursed and exc
Grated by posterity for all time coming for the wide
and desolatng ruin that will inevitably follow this
act you now propose to perpetuate.
Pause, l entreat you, and consider for a moment
what reason you can give that will even satisfy
| yourselves in calner nloments-what reasons can
yon give TO your fellow sufferers in the calamity
that it win bring upon US? What reasons can you
give TO the nations of the earth 10 justify il? They
win be the calm and deliberate Judges in the case
and to what cause or one act can YOU name
or point which to rest The plea of justification
| What rights has the North assailed? What inter-
ests of the South has been invaded? What Justice
| has been denied? and what claim founded in JUS
tice and right has been Withhold? Can either of
| yon to-day name one governmental act of wrong
| deliberately and purposely done by the Govern
ment at Washington of which the South has right
to complaint challenge the answer
4
Now. for you To attempts TO overthrow such gov
eminent as this under which we have lived for
more than three-IaRrsers OF century--in which