Year: 1868




enable the Rebel States to reconstruct
themselves with the least possible diff
iculty or delay.


1t is difficult for one to imagine how
any honest, intelligent man can join with
President johnson, and charge the ma
'jority of Congress with being clas. of
radicals and traitors, changing on the
skirts of a Government which they are
trying to destroy"


form an apology for such unreasonable
charges as | find in your specches-and
in the speeches of others claiming to be
! Democrats-against an administration
that has had to contend with every form
of difficulty and misrepresentation that
the ingenuity of those who were in rebel
lion against the Government, and of all
who were in sympathy with them, could
invent.


regret to find in several of your
speeches that you make no allowance for
the extradinary and trying circumstances
through which the Government has been
compelled to pass-circumstances that
would have made it wise and proper to
have raised money by forced loans, if no
other means could have been found to
save the nations life.


You have said truly in your late speech
that the Republican party "denounces all
forms of reputation as national crime"
You then try to throw on that party the
odium of deliberate design to repu-
diate the national debt.


The Reputation of the national debt is
one of the last acts that the Republican
party will ever tolerate or allow


[ have been panied to find in your
several speeches course of reasoning
that is tending to revive the rebellious spirit
throughout our Southern States-a course
of reasoning that has already won for you
the enthusiastic support of those who
were most prominent in the Rebellion,
and ofall who are in sympathy with them
throughout our country.


am sorry to see in your speeches an
effort to prejudice the laboring popula-
tion with the statement that the Govern
ment is introducing a system of unjust
and unequal taxation.


1t is certain that our Government could
never stand in the presence of such laws
as prevailed throughout the Southern
States before the Rebellion; laws that
made it crime to "unbind the heavy
burden, and let the captive go free )"
laws that made it crime to teach poor
helpless slave to read and write, fearing
that a knowledge of the Declaration of
Independence, that declares the unl;enable
right of every man to his life, liberty,
and the pursuit Of happiness, would make
him unwilling longer to remain slave.


To talk of such system and such laws
as have prevailed at the South being de-
mocratic, is to talk of living body with
out an animating spirit.


TIE Cincinnati Catholic Telegraph,
the official organ of the Cathoic Church
in the West, has said, with great pro-
priety, that "the interest of humanity and
the welfare of white labor, in particular,
are involved in the question of Slavery
more than in any other, and it is the
duty of men to prepare their minds con-
scientiously that they may, as far as pos
sible, maintain what is best for the pco-
pie. Every one acknowledges that Sla-
very is an evil No man who is free
would ever consent to be slave. 1t is
abhorrent to his nature. No one can al
lcge any right to reduce human being
to that miserable condition. 1t is detest-
able to mind and heart. And moreover
he who reduces a free man to Slavery is
excommunicated by the Catholic Church.
Slavery was the cause of our national trou-
bles. 1t was for Slavery that the war
was commenced, and the blood of the
brave men who have fallen on both sides
has been shed by this insatiatc monster.
The hope of its restoration is not aband-
oned There are multitudes of men who
would love to see it in the ascendant as it
was before" Never were truer words
said than that "Slavery was the cause of
our national troubles"


Notwithstanding all the misery that
Slavery and the war has brought on our
country, let us assure all who took part
in the Rebellion that we intend to do
them all the good we can We intend to
secure for them and for ourselves the con-
stitutional guaranty of a republican form
of government, which is the greatest
earthly blessing our nation can posses.


1t has been with more than ordinary
sorrow that find among the errors of
your late speech other grave charges
against the Republican party.


You say it has adopted ga policy of
hate, of waste, and of military despotism,"
in all of which you are as much in error
as you arc when you state that the Re,
publican party has expended S500000,-
900 of the taxes drawn from the people
of this country "to uphold dcspotc mil
itary authority, aud to crush out the life
of the States"


The facts, as shown by Mr.. Blaine in
Congress, are that only very small part
of the amount you name was
expended in maintaining the authority
of the Government over the Rebel States.
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