Whatever may be said laudatory of . . .

. . . our gallant Iowa volunteers – of the loyalty of the mass of the people of all political parties, it is very apparent that the State does not contain a single loyal Democratic newspaper, and of the Jones and Dodge clique who governed Iowa up to 1854, very few can be sure and certainly counted as unconditional Union men.  In our State the Vallandigham manifesto is published and commended in every Democratic paper and accepted by most of the leading politicians – by men who control the organization.  This is the case in no other State.  In the New England and Middle States most of the Democratic politicians and papers reject the Vallandigham address as tainted with secession.  Even in Indiana scarcely a single Democratic newspaper will touch it.  Here is what Gray, of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, the leading Democratic newspaper in Ohio, says of it:

“Our motto is, first quash the rebellion and save the Constitution and the country, and then we shall have, and now be slow in expressing, our views of men and measures.  But with so gigantic a rebellion on hand as exists in [this] nation, a unity of all the friends of the Constitution and the old Stars and Stripes is necessary, in our estimation, to put it down and bring it back to its original status; and whatever may stand between the country and this result for the time must stand aside or be held in abeyance.  If it cannot be accomplished without destroying slavery where it lies across its track, let it be destroyed.  Nor can we see that this conflicts with ‘Popular Sovereignty.’  Without a country and a Constitution, what is Popular Sovereignty worth?  Then, we repeat, what the country needs most, or first, is an end to the rebellion, and the nation brought back to a recognition of the Constitution and the rights of the majority.”

Iowa, while she furnishes the largest quota of troops who are conceded to be the best and the bravest, upon every battle field, is disgraced in the possession of a few of the meanest secesh politicians in all the loyal States – men unmistakably disloyal – men who not only give their voice, their influence, and their active, persistent labor to embarrass the Government in its war for the Union, but who labor as persistently in aid of the rebellion, sending recruits to the aid of the rebel army – giving their sons to Davis and Beauregard to murder our loyal volunteers and destroy the Government.  Quite a number of prominent young men of Dubuque have been recruited for the rebel army through the influence of Jones and his family and Dennis Mahoney.  Doctor Pendleton, the Democrat nominee for Clerk of Des Moines county, and Doctor Edelin, Physician and Steward of the Marine Hospital at Burlington, appointed under Buchanan though the influence of leading Democrats of Burlington, are both in the rebel army and both fought against us in the battle of Pittsburgh Landing.

We cheerfully bear witness to the loyalty of the masses of that party and disclaim any intention of stating these facts to disparage or disgrace them.  We publish only to show the tendency of the leaders – their evident intention to USE the party to further their treasonable designs.  We ask loyal Democrats to read Mr. Douglas’ patriotic utterances after the rebels had inaugurated this infernal war, and try the Jones and Dodge conspirators by the standard he erected.

– Published in The Burlington Weekly Hawk-Eye, Burlington, Iowa, Saturday, May 24, 1862, p. 2