Year: 1876

fix up the legislation of the country, and
TO shape its foreign and domestic policy
the question Of loyalty OF "inihy," VI
they prefer IL, assumes different aspect,
the stupid Jest becomes dull menace, the
testers hold the reins of powers-what
are the consequences likely to be2


AS sample, we should say that the
hostility to loyalty would be likely to take
shape in reversing some of these Con-
gressional Verdicts which excited the out
cry against loyalty. There is a public
document which is called the Report OF
the Committee on the Conduct of the War,
report highly Objectionable to the gen.
tlemen who sneer at loyalty, and If we
may Judge by their positions in the recent
debates, they would like to have hand in
the makingof report to suit themselves.
The existing report contains some retec-
tions upon the management of Anderson
vile Prison, and if We remember rightly,
when the subject was touched upon in
the House OF Representatives the other
day, the scoffers at loyalty insisted that
Andersonville was a pleasant retreat for
invalids, compared to Elmira or Camp
Douglas. Are we to have new Com
mittee on the Conduct of the War, and
shall our official record of the struggle be
written by Ben Hill and annotated by
Cox? If Hill and Cox are honest, such
report is a duty they owe to themselves.


We are justified inanticipatingth that they
would be ready to perform that duty from
the readiness that all the Coniederates in
Congress have shown in vindicating
themselves, but we do not believe that the
people of the United States recognize the
vindication of the COnfederacy TO be
among the objects for which our Con
= 4 -
carried on. of course, to people who
have been snecring at loyalty for ten years
it seems to be the most natural and proper
thing in the world to defend the cause of
dislOyalty, but they are not going to get
another chance to do it in Congress. The
matter was probably not thoughtof by the
| Republicans, who two years ago allowed
the elections to 90 by default, or, if it was
thought of at all, it was looked on merely
as a harmless abstraction; but, now that
the thing has taken shape in acts and reso-
| lutions of Congress, there is an issue put
before the people, and he would be a very
stupid calculator, indeed, who makes a
mistaken estimate of which way the vote
of the reople will go on that issue.


The report of the Committee on the
Conduct of the War may be an unfair,
partisan document; but, if we must
choose between it and report from the
| Confederate side, we will even choose our
own report as the least of two evils. And
we will not ask to have the Ku-kluX
Committee reports corrected and amended
by the White League of Mississippi or
Louisiana. We do not care to have the
question of our liability on account of
rebel war claims put into the hands of
Senator Stevenson or of George H.
Pendletou; nor to have the debt created
by the destruction of the Confederacy de-
stroyed by the new creation of a confeder-
acy in Congress. We are aware that if
we object to these natural results of Dem
ocratic supremacy, we will expose our
selves to the danger Of being stigmatized
as /" loyaln; but if the time has indeed
come again when the line between loyalty
and disloyalty is to be as sharply drawn
as it was fifteen years ago, the choice
will be made as quickly and emphatically
as it was fifteen years ago. The loyal
people of this country were majority
then at the polls and in the battlefield,
and they are majority now, though they
can spare themselves the sad necessity
of showing their strength in battle by
showing their strength with the ballots


There is not one of them who would not
wish that the political issue of this yeaI
had been differently made up--no one
who would not have preferred that an
universal harmony on the fundamental
questions of government might nave left
them free to settle practical questions o.


detail. But if the issue is forced or
them, and if they are compelled to TAX,
up the rusty political weapons of by-gonC
contests, they are ready to accept the or
deal; and if the coming election is to be {
4 IL i = IL
there is no Republican candidate so weak
no platform so bad, that it cannot SWEEP
the country as decisively as at the las


Presidential election, or the previous one
when the issues were the same.-,St LOui,
| Globe Democrat