Year: 1875

not aware that the North has committed


any fault, needing atonement, for the


part it took in the affairs of 1861 and
1865. At all events, that fault has never


impressed itself, in large proportions


upon any but those Democratic states


men who were unable to discover the of
| fense of taking up arms south of Mason
and Dixon's line, while the same act
| north of it was unconstitutional, null
and void-as history shows that there


was no act of the general government
during the rebellion that was not char


acterized by those three epithets.
Upon the other hand, if our Southern


brethren entertain a desire of any such


reconciliation, as all good citizens should
! desire, they do not give it out in speech


es, nor do they proclaim it by their acts.
! They claim great credit for caudor in
saying they have laid down arms finally
and forever. With equal candor do they
assert that the principles for which they
| fought are undying, and will ultimately
! prevail Has any Southerner yet admit
| ted that the war, on their part, was
! wrong? Has any one been heard to ex
press regret for the four years OF deyilty
they played with such sanguine tempera-
ment? Indeed, the general tone of pub
lie conversation is such that one might
fairly suppose that our Southern breth-
rem were the most abused, outraged set
OF men on the face OF the earth, and that
the North had committed grave crimes
and misdemeanors in thrashing them in
to proper sense of their filial obliga-
tions, and Furnishing them to make them
behave themselves.


Is it not an alarming fact that the doe
trine of secession is still discussed in the
Southern States? That the proposition
is gravely put, as automatic, that the
Federal Union was a concern into which
States went by their own consent, and
by consequence they can 20 out of it
again just when they please. This is
States rights!-which chooses it's own
mode and measure of redress


Ii it be a matter for grave considera-
ton that the old-school doctrines on
which the war was fought, are still held
in the Southern section of the Union,
the gravity of the occasion is not dimin-
ished by the fact that these same opin-
ions are held by powerful party at the
North. Under the theory of States
rights, as understood by the Democracy,
Mr.. Buchanan's last message to Congress
aveTred that he was unable to find any
constitutional warrant for compelling a
State to obey the laws. Has the war yet
discovered to Democratic statesmen any
such latent constitutional power? Or
has the war wrought any such change in
Democratic sentiment as to compel an
abandonment of their former ideas on
this subject? Have they thrown over
board, with shot tied to their heels, those
leaders who followed in Mr. Buchanan's
wake, and who were convinced that
Union armies must pass over the dead
bodies of ten hundred dead Democrats
before they could strike Union foe? Is
that class of Democrats quite deiunct
who, in time of cnnvulsion, despair and
revolution, had no higher conception of
duty than such as might mark the gay
gallantry of a French dancing-master as
he bowed his benedictions upon the way
ward sisters whom he longed to see de-
parting in peace?


If the war accomplished anything, it
was the total destruction and overthrow
of those notions which originated it and
gave it vigor.


Is it absolutely certain that those ideas
have been completely abandoned, not by
that large number of people who once
held them. but by any one? D. I. W.


CIYcINNATI, Oct. %, 1875.