. . . at their dirty work, when they see the people of the border States moving vigorously in the cause of emancipation, while they are trying to agitate in the interest, and restore the dominion and power of slavery as a political institution. How very cheap the corner grocery politicians in Iowa must feel while howling “Abolitionist,” seeing sensible men of all parties in Missouri earnestly moving to rid that State of the curse of Slavery. We hardly wonder that Southern people hold in utter contempt and detestation all Northern people. Their ideas of northern men have been formed by intercourse with the mercenary horde of doughface politicians. They believe all Northern people as mean and despicable, as unprincipled and time serving, as dastardly and infamous as these God-forsaken wretches.
Here is an extract from the Palmyra, Missouri Currier, a paper never accused of abolitionism. We invite Jones, Mahony, Hendershot, Dean, Sheward and their sweet scented co-laborers to read it and howl. After reviewing the reviewing the wretched condition of the finances of Missouri, with a public debt of $27,000,000, the Courier remarks:
Bankruptcy, or the introduction of labor and capital, then are the issues before us. Either the State must be developed in her resources, or it must sink. Let us look then, for capital and labor. Where shall they be found? They are not within the State. Capital and labor, to a great extent, have been driven from the State by the rebellion, and will not return until their safety shall have been guaranteed.
Shall we look to the border Slave States? – They, too, are in a similar condition.
* * * * * *
It is to the Free States, then, that, notwithstanding our prejudices, we must turn for what we need and must have. They only have the labor and capital to save us. But in procuring from them that which we want as necessary for our deliverance from insupportable burdens, there comes the necessity for the making of another choice – a choice between the surrender of our prejudices against free labor, or the ruin of the State. If we triumph over our prejudices, the State will be saved. If our prejudices triumph over us, all is lost.
As to the cause of the war it says:
We shall be content with the single remark that as the rebellion has found its firmest foothold where slavery most predominates, and has raged wherever slavery has existed – from the Northern boundaries of Maryland and Missouri, to the remotest limits of Texas – and in no other place whatever, it will henceforth be difficult to convince free labor and free capital that they are permanently secure in any State in which the institution of slavery permanently exists.
– Published in The Burlington Weekly Hawk-Eye, Burlington, Iowa, Saturday, May 24, 1862, p. 1
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