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useless and foolish one.
What advantage can possibly accrue to any one from this war, however prolonged it might be?
Does any suppose that millions of free white Americans in the Southern States, who will soon be arrayed against us, can be conquered by any efforts which can be brought against them?
Brave men, fighting on their own soil, and, as they believe, for their freedom and dearest rights, can never be subjugated.
The war may be prolonged until we are ourselves exhausted, and become an easy prey to military despotism or equally fatal anarchy; but we can never conquer the South.
Admit, if you please, that they are rebels and traitors: they are beyond our reach.
Why should we destroy ourselves in injuring them?
Who are to fight the battles of sectional hatred in this sad strife?
The Seceders will fight; but will the Abolitionists, who have combined with them to overthrow the Union, make themselves food for powder?
If this could be so — if ten thousand picked fire-eaters of either side could be arrayed against each other, and would fight until, like the Kilkenny cats, all were destroyed — the country would be the better for it. But, while the Secessionist defends himself, the Abolitionist will sneak in the back-ground, leaving those to do the fighting who have no interest in the bloody strife, no hatred against their brethren.
The best we can hope is, that, at the end of a fearful struggle, when the country becomes tired of gratifying a spirit of fanaticism, we shall have peace through a treaty in which both sides must make sacrifices, but each must agree to respect the rights of the other.
How much better to make such a treaty now, before further bloodshed, before worse hatreds are engendered!
The Bangor Union (
Maine) still more boldly said:
Democrats of Maine!
the loyal sons of the South have gathered around Charleston, as your fathers of old gathered about Boston, in defense of the same sacred principles of liberty — principles which you have ever upheld and defended with your vote, your voice, and your strong right arm. Your sympathies are with the defenders of the truth and the right.
Those who have inaugurated this unholy and unjustifiable war are no friends of yours — no friends of Democratic Liberty.
Will you aid them in their work of subjugation and tyranny?
When the Government at Washington calls for volunteers or recruits to carry on the work of subjugation and tyranny under the specious phrase of “enforcing the laws,” “retaking and protecting the public property,” and “ collecting the revenue,” let every Democrat fold his arms, and bid the minions of Tory despotism do a Tory despot's work.
Say to them fearlessly and boldly, in the language of England's great Lord, the Earl of Chatham, whose bold words in behalf of the struggling colonies of America, in the dark hours of the Revolution, have enshrined his name in the heart of every friend of freedom and immortalized his fame wherever the name of liberty is known — say, in his thrilling language: “If I were a Southerner, as I am a Northerner, while a foreign troop was landed in my country, I would never lay down my arms--never, never, never!”
The Albany Argyus more cautiously and guardedly said:
The first gun of civil war is heard, whose reverberations are yet to echo through the civilized world — the signal of events of which no man can tell tile end. A fearful responsibility is due to those who have brought this crisis upon the country.
War is not the least of calamities.
If the Federal Government were about to sacrifice its treasures and fleets and armies to rebuke the Spanish usurpation in Saint Domingo — if this armament were intended to repel Mexican aggression, or to assert our right to San Juan against English pretension — every citizen would gladly rally to the support of the Government.
But it is between the States of the Union that the war is to be declared; and its provocations are to be found in the aggressions of section against section, and the defiance of constitutional guarantees.
It is a civil war that opens — a war whose successes are without glory, whose noblest deeds are without honor, for they are won in fratricidal conflict, and their cost is fratricidal blood.
If this were even a natural, intelligent assertion of Government authority, it would appeal to the moral sentiment of the country.
If its object and result were to restore the Union and reestablish the Constitution over these States.
it might be worth all the sacrifices it imposed.
For ourselves, we should place no impediments in its way, but bid it God speed to its end. Every Democrat in the North would take the same position.
But it cannot, in any event, have this effect.
It cannot restore; it can only destroy.
There are those who believe that it is the deliberate purpose of the Administration to terminate, in a war in which sectional passions shall be aroused to the utmost hight, the connection between the North and the South, and to cut off all possible hope of reconstruction.
If this is the purpose of the Administration, they have lost no time in its execution.
The
