Goldsboro weekly argus. [volume] (Goldsboro, N.C.) 1885-1909, 1902-05-15

IOI 1S Oh G10 Un0 ODl1ga-
tions of the compact of union. The
South was made to pay a shamefully |
disproportionate share of the Revo-
of New England were empowered
to draw bounties out of the common J
treasury; and up to 1860, according
official records, they had drawn out
$13, 000, 600. The shipping and COM
mercial classes of that section were |
empowered to levy tribute On the
South, and for a number of years
preceding 1860 the South was paying
annually in freight to Northern
shippers about half as much as the
total cost of their ships, and the man
ufacturers of the North were quar-
tered on the taxpayers at an early
day, and up to 1916 the South had
paid about seven-ninths of all the
expenses of the government, besides
a bonusto themanufacturers amount
ing to not less than $25, 600, 900 annu-
ally for twenty or thirty years before
1861. Now, my friends, stop and
reflect a moment, and ask yourselves
whether anything short of ineXcus-
able ignorance could boldly assert
that the men who sought to free the
oCbOI HUH SOCI IMPRESSION WIZ
rebels and traitors. And, while you
are meditating, let your thoughts go
out to another question. That is, is
there anything in the moral law Or
in therecognized properties of official
life j~ustifying the President in de
nOuncing the COnfederates as
chists?
But I avenottoldthe whole story.
Injustice did not stop at compelling
the South to pay tribute to the North
and to bear most of the burdens of
the Federal government; the laws
were so framed and the government
so administered as to tranfer to the
North much of the money CON
: tributed by the South to the general
treasury. Up, to 1888 the records
} prove that the pension money paid
5 to Revolutionary soldiers of the
! North was three times as much, per
} capita, as that paid to the soldiers of
} the South; and they show that up to
: 1860 appropriations for rivers and
harbors, light houses, coast survey,
: navy yards and coast defense had
f been nearly ten times as large for the
: North as for the South.
| Thus it appears that for seventy
| years the North was drawing from
f the South a large portion of the earn
. ings of the people, and doing it, too,
r by methods which few Of the people
T. could understand. And during all
e these years, marked by bitter con-
: tests in Congress, elimination and
: recrimination, it was never charged,
0 it was never even limited, that the
: South was endeavoring to employ
the forms of law to rob the North.
But the story Of wrongs is notend-
/ ed yet; Southern dissatisfaction with
b the Union was not due solely to en-
= croachments on the Constitutional
e rights of this section by the legisla.
ton OF the Congress; the perfidy OF
b certain States added fuel to the fires
e of discomfort, For nearly half of the
O lifetime of the Union there had beer
growing up in the North a poIitica.
d party led by ignorant demagogues
r and INSCRIPTIONS fanatics, whose
: avoWed purpose was to NEEDLE with
the social institutions of the South
b and to destroy that "domestic tran
W. guilty" which was declared to bs
n one of the chief blessings guaranteed
/, to the States in thecompact o. Union
IF This party denounced the Constitu
ton as "a league with death and al
l., agreement with help, and publicl,
u announced its readiness to see tn
lie Union dissolved. 1t grew in strength
st and insOlence as the years passed by
OF some of the most distinguished states
f. men of the North championed ii
l. cause; and in some instances it wa
patronized and encouraged by State
" whose governors, legislators an
re judges were bound by a solemn oat
y to support the Constitution.
IS My friends, there is mor of it; bu
I have given you enough to justif
it the Southern States in withdrawn
MT from a partnership in which ever
tie rguarantee-to them had becomea dea
o. letter, and to quito shame the peop]
lg who call us rebels and traitors. Whs
at is the value of a code of morals?
as one member Of a partnership entere
in into by his ancestors or himself
under any moral obligation to subm
of, to entertainments on his rights b
IN his c~opartners, who are bound b
he solemn oath to respect his right
eb we have destroyed all the munimen
" of political and civil liberty and soci:
"a rights, ndsUbstituted mightforrigh
"a, This the Southern States were IL
al willing to do. Hence when the
he Withdrew from the Union, they d
he ljust. what any other communitie
10 under like circumstances, would ha,
lin done. The generation then livin
all with the lights before them, saw 1
other means of freeing themselv
and their children from perpetu
on bondage to the North; and the
would have been untrue to the tru
which the orderings of Providen
had placed in their hands, ifthey hi
failed to perform their duty as thu
til saw 1t.