Year: 1862

keasOn> Whys


The reasons why there should be change
in Congress are numerous and patent. Even
the New York Tribune acknowledges that we
have mostly second-rate men in the House.
No doubt that paper is truthful in this ac-
knowledgment. The fact is discreditable dis
couraging in the present appalling juncture,
and forms one reason why the people should
use their power at the ballot-box; beyond this,
however, the country needs an entire change
OF policy 1t cannot be safe until Congress
is composed of men who heartily love the
Union, and who are entirely faithful to the
Constitution. 1t is monstrous to suppose that
men who have nullifed the Federal laws. who
have acted with the incendiaries who declare
the Constitution league with hell and a COW
enant with death, and who have adhered to
the irrepressible conflict doctrine, can so over
come their hatred of the Union as to act sin
cerely and efficiently to preserve it. They
must either have been false in all the declara-
tions of their past political lives, or they must
have undergone a conversion more miraculous
than that of the Apostle Paul.


There are, however, no evidences of con-
version, and, worse still, there are no evidences
of prdcticdbilay. The endeavor appears to
have been to conduct the war upon the as
sumption that all the delusions these men
created in the popular mind for political pur-
poses are true. The struggle with the South
was rashly courted upon the ground of South
ern inferiority, and to this day the dominant
party are ignorant of the vastneSs of that
struggle. They do not seem to comprehend
what energy. sacrifices and power. are neces-
sary to conquer peace. Indeed, the instant
they recognize these facts, they abiure all
their old theories, and plead guilty to a decep-
ton of the people unparalleled in the history
of the world. 1t is a hard pill for them to
swallow, TO be obliged to confess that they
were wrong when they said there could be no
war; wrong when they boasted that the South
could not be kicked out of the Union wrong
when they educated the people to believe that
the negroes would revolt wrong when they
assumed that posse comitdtus and few
threats of confscation and emancipation would
reduce the seeded States to obedience No
men Ike to eat their own words. 1t is hard
TO be forced TO swallow our own cherished
doctrines, and to confess that they are only
cheats and frauds after all Yet this is the
very thing the dominant party. or at least the
leaders OF it, are called upon, by the stern ex-
igencies of the times. to do, and this is exactly





to their theory amid the storm and tempest.
Beginning with unbelief they have foated on
the flood, declaring. even as the waves rise
higher and higher, that there viii not be much
of shower after all. Thirty, sixty, ninety
DAYS life was given to the rebellion. Ii is
always 10 be repreSSed soon. The emancipa-
ton OF the slaves in the District of Columbia,
the confscation bill, the act prohibiting slavery
in the Territories, all of these were to be
panaceas which in some inexplicable way
would conquer the rebels Then. as a crown
ing glory. as great gun in their system of
warfare. these Congressional Bourbons enact
the nigger militia law authorize the President
to arm the blacks. as if Northern white men
would be put upon an equality with the plan
tation savages, and as If Southern white men
would be terrified at the threat Of using race
with whom they hold under the power of their
bayonets. All this is nonsense, irnpracticable.
Il wins no victories. 1t disperses no rebel
armies. Ii is neither peace nor war. 1t Is a
foolish attempt to achieve, by speaking, wri-
ting and enactments what can only be accom-
plished by fighting. The result Is, that to-day
the rebels are more powerful than they were
a year ago. Congress has done everything
TO taunt and to stimulate, nothing to subdue
them. In fact, so gross has been the miscon-
ception of the nature of the struggle, and 50
firm the adhesion to the old election delusions,
that Wilson, the chairman of the Military
Committee of the Senate, even as late as last
March. declared that we had one hundred
and fifty thousand TOO many troops in the field.
He thought that they ought to be disbanded.
To his vision, at least, the struggle seemed to
committed TO pen and ink-the day of bayo-
net and cannon was past.


Thus we find the war failure down TO the
present moment. Shall it continue so?


The people want success. Can the present
men in Congress, the Wilson's, Summers,
Wades, Chambers, Lovejoys, Beamans and
kelloggs give them success? If they can,
why have they not done it? Have not they