Year: 1866

The only hold the new Johnson Democratic movement can possibly have upon the popular heart, arises from the desire of all men of all parties. for political union with the South. To effect this end the late Philadelohia Cohssn. ton was called union has been attempted, and the question now is whether it is such union as can commend itself to those of us who earnestly favored the prosecution of-thsq late war. We think it is not. and the reason is obvious E rl-EfEIfE4-fIl st-

 The Southern delegates to that Con vention were the very politicians who were prominent in the South before and during the war they now represent, as they always have represented, the Southern aristocracy; they were the best and most patriotic of them We admit, but unmistakably of that caste.-- With such men we do not believe any North ern party can form political alliance aud live. = 7-- .

 Yet they are men whom we are by no means disposed to under-rate; the North made that mistake once and it cost us many men and much money. They ae a frank, ge- nial, brave race. sure to win golden opinions of all whom they are willing to meet on terms of social equality. But the last thing, which just now, we have any right to expect of them. is patriotism. They are undoubtedly anxiou to come into the Union. to secure the recogni- tion of thelr State governments, and to gain political support at the North, in order to save if possible the remains of their once formida ble power. It is because they seek ths sup port from selfish and not from patriotic mo- tives, that their alliance is dangerous. A so- cial revolution is going on at the South which all accounts show is far from complete and it is to prevent it's completion that these gentle men are now seeking political power.

 The real question is whether our decree of ciemanpation shall be sborn of half it's force, and the South given over, like Jamaica, to decay ing aristocracy; or whether society, there, is to be settled on really free basis and South and North enabled to prosper alike. Nothing it seems to us could equal the folly, after having declared emancipation, of entrueting all the details of such measure to men who once lived in ease and affluence, but who, by this very measure, have been reduced in some in stances to manual labor, in most to compara- tive poverty-the very men in fact who are most interested in rendering it intellectual.

 History is full of such experiments and every one failure. The disastrous restoration of the Stuarts in 1860 was only remedied by their expulsion in 1888. In ls4s almost every ab- solute monarch in Europe accepted constitu- tional limitations of his authority, and few years proved how futile these limitations were. If there ever was man, who having inheri ted peculiar privileges. might have been trust ed to give them up for the good of the peo- pie. it was Louis XVI of France. yet he pr,ved utterly false to his constitutional oaths, and perished miserably on the scaffold. from the fatal mistake of these, who, in trusting him trusted teo much to weak human nature.

 We cannot accuse Southern gentlemen of insincerity; they have yielded much. and can- not conceive why any one should ask them to yield more. They honestly believe that the negro ought, for his own good and for the good of society, to be compelled to labor, and they expect still to enjoy the fruits of that la bor. But has any Southern man. proposing to compel the negro te work. ever proposed to compel the white to work likewise? Yet which is the most idIe7 Many men, North any nearly all men, South, have yet to recog- nize the vital fact proved by thirty years of our history that race which depends upon any other race to do its manual labor, is an un- safe element in a democratic commonwealth By merely making the negro serf instead of slave We shall not escape another civil war.

 Now we are equally anxious with any man that the party to which we belong should find friends in the SoutA> We have them already iu the Border States and in East Tennessee i; and all over the mountainous regions of the South are scattered s class of white yeomanry. i'll educated and hostile, ss yet. but whose Iru0 luter0St le WitQ uSs anu WuOS9 Ul0DuS0lp We shall yet win n; while, in the level cotton districts the blacks are our friends always, and there will yet spring up class of whites. when matters have been once settled on a free basis, which will be favorable to the new order of things, and which we can trust. Unionism must however, it seems to us, be plant of slow growth at the South. Disioyalty to ns- tioual authority has beeQ steadily growing there for thirty years, and we cannot expect that it will be eradicated easily or soon. ;

 Ours is not an easy task. It is much more pleasant 10 be generous than to be just, and we are not altogether surprised that there are men of warm sympathies. who. like Henry Ward Beecher, having fought through the great fight grandly, are now willing to give up all the substantial fruits of our victory. .,4or

 We are as ready as any to admire the hero ism and devotion displayed in cause scarcely worse than that over which the genius of Scott has thrown such veil of romance but We wish to form no political alliance with the Stuarts, &1.