The Democrat from day to day is harping on the Constitution. It takes the ground that Republicans and all others who are not pro-slavery in their views are abolitionists, and any measure tending to a prosecution or close of the war, unless it leave slavery intact, is unconstitutional. It interprets the proclamation of Gen. Halleck to his soldiers, “to impress upon the minds of the rebels that the object of their mission is not to violate, but to restore their laws,” to signify that the rebel States are to be restored to the Union just as they were before they seceded from it. In plain terms, our neighbor desires to see the rebel States brought back into the Union possessing all the rights, privileges and immunities they had before they colleagued together to overthrow the Government; the rebels secured in all their possessions, and the institution of slavery standing just where it did, before with high-hand they sought to destroy our liberties. They are to be forgiven for all the bloodshed, sorrow and misery they have brought upon our country, and the loyal people of the North are to be burdened with taxation to pay the monstrous debt these miscreants have entailed upon the nation.
We know not how many Northern sympathizers this editor finds with the abominable doctrine he promulgates, but if in the course of events such a thing should come to pass, it would be a triumph for the South that would not only disgrace us in the eyes of the world, but lay a firmer foundation for future rebellion than the South had before it. So ineffectually sought to disrupt the government and build up a slave oligarchy on its ruins. If we are to gain nothing by this war and to saddle upon ourselves a national debt to be entailed upon our children for generations to come, and still to foster among us the festering sore that caused all our troubles, then we would appeal to the common sense of every one, if it would not be virtually a Southern triumph. The North would be the vanquished party, and the South would glory in an institution firmly established at the point of the sword. – We would be in a far worse condition than before the outbreak of the rebellion.
This idea may suit one who has periled nothing in the contest, who has esteemed the preservation of slavery superior to that of his country, who has looked upon the war as one waged for the abolition of slavery, and hoped in his heart that that object might not be accomplished; but it finds no approval in the minds of those who have taken more enlarged views of the subject, and thrown their lives into the scale for the preservation of the Union. We are not fighting for slavery; but, as it caused the war, if in the contest it is eradicated, root and branch, God be praised; our republic will be planted on a basis so firm that it will stand until nations cease to exist.
We have not the remotest idea that the President, his Cabinet, Congress, or the people, have any wish to see the rebellious States come back into the Union with all the rights and privileges guaranteed them that they possessed before the rebellion. It would be an outrage upon the North, after all it has suffered at their hands, to admit them again into the Confederacy on an equal footing. – We believe in the old principle of criminal law, that they party found guilty shall pay the costs of prosecution. They never can be made to liquidate the tithe of the debt the Government holds against them for the loss of life and the vast suffering they have inflicted upon the country, but the property of the rebels can and should be made to pay the pecuniary indebtedness that their satanic course has entailed upon us. The rebel States should, and no doubt will be, reduced to territories, and the property of the rebels be confiscated to pay the war debt. The settlement of the slave question will then be an after consideration, to come up when these territories again apply for admission into the Union, if not previously settled by the people, or the wise legislation of our Congress.
– Published in The Davenport Daily Gazette, Davenport, Iowa, Monday Morning, March 3, 1862, p. 2
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