The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1886-05-01
JEFFERSON DAVIs'S LIES.

1t Is no new thing Tor the leaders or tne
South to attempt to deceive their people.
They did it in the momentous days of 1860
and 1861, and the result was one of the most
sanguinary civil wars that ever disgraced civ
ilization. But for the infamous dishonesty Of
such men as Jefferson Davis and his kind,
there would have been no war, for the masses
in the South had no notion of going into war
when there was no excuse for such action.
Had the question been left to a fair vote of
the people in the several States, it would have
been demonstrated that they were opposed to
it. There was no solid South in favor of re-
bellion, and the masses were fairly dragooned
into the reasonable experiment that proved
so disastrous to those who went into it, and
which would have resulted even more seri-
ously to the traitorous leaders but for the un-
para1leled magnanimity of the triumphant
North, which took revenge against no man
for the perpetration Of one Of the most mon
strous crimes that ever b!ackened the pages
VI uiStOIJs cShCiccA LAWS WOuiu like W
have it appear that he was something else
than contemplate traitor, but he will never
succeed. To-day he appears to be conveying
such an impression, but it must be borne in
mind that those who are with him are person
ally interested in making it appear that he
was not an ungrateful, selfish, scheming man,
intent on his own. The impartial fingers Of
history are beginning to reach for these fell
lows, and the feeling is not a pleasing one
that they are to be written down as the enc
mics of their country, and the murderers Of
their fellow citizens, which they were. When
jeff Davis attempts to make it appear that
the North was the aggressor he knows,
as everybody knows, that the claim is prepos-
tersus, and cannot be sustained by the facts
jeff Davis's own utterances prove that he is a
liar when he says the South hoped to go out
of the Union without opposition, and that it
prepared to defend itself only when it saw
that the North was intent on hostile invasion
IL a SpoCSA a. o,o'Shoons <AiosJ LumtulhtCis
succeeding his Inauguration at Montgomery,
and before the Republican party had come
into power, he said:
'Your border States will gladly come into
the Southern Confederacy within sixty days.
as we will oe their only friends. England
will recognize us, and glorious future is be-
fore u.s. The grass will grow in the Northern
cities where the pavements have been worn
off by the tread of commerce We will carry
war where it is easy to advance-where food
for the sword and torch await our armies in
the densely populated cities; and though they
may come and spoil our crops, we can raise
them as before; while they cannot rear the
cities which took years of industry and mill
ions of money to build"
This was the argument be used to draw the
masses into rebellion. The inducement was
that the North was to be invaded its cities
burned and sacked, and its commerce de.
stroyed But the intention of thesa plotting
traitors was revealed long before the exercises
ct Montgomery on that memorable day in
February. 1861. For months this same JEFF
ferson Davis. as . member Of tho United