What They Ask

The staple of the Democrat’s leaders of late is an attack on the Republican party, the members of which by way of stigma it terms abolitionists, because it will not agree to leave the slave states at the close of the rebellion in the undisputed possession of all the rights they enjoyed before they turned traitors to their country.  Under the shallow plea of a violation of the Constitution, it takes up the rebel cry of certain partisan editors of the baser sort, and proclaims, that unless you concede to the Southern States the rights they possessed before this war, you trample upon the Constitution – you must let them alone.  Yes, that was all the rebel States asked for in the first place, simply to be let alone; but our Government did not choose to let them alone in their treason, hence this civil war.  Yet here are a parcel of “Northern men with Southern principles” springing up at this late day, and re-echoing the cry of the South to be let alone.

The Southern States have made war on the Government, have slain thousands of our bravest young men, have sown misery and woe broadcast over the land, broken up households, robbed families of their means of livelihood, involved our nation in debt a thousand millions of dollars; and now it is claimed they should come back into the Union, bringing with them the cause of all our troubles, more overbearing than ever from the strength it acquired in withstanding the fiery ordeal through which it passed.  Nor is this all; the people of the North, who have suffered so much from these miserable traitors, are to take them back into the Government upon their own recognizance, install them in the highest seats of the synagogue, and bow down to the blood Moloch that has just now converted our fair country into a second valley of Tophet.  Nor do their exactions end here; while we carefully guard the possessions of the Southerners from all harm, we, self-sacrificing Northerners, are all to dispose of our homesteads and rob our families of every comfort, in order to pay the debts contracted in prosecuting this war.  Woe be to our country and to our people, if ever such a curse befall it as these miserable, misguided editors for partisan purposes would bring upon it.  It would make us a by-word in the mouths of the nations of the earth, and the once glorious flag of our Union would droop in shame over a people conquered by their own vices.

– Published in The Davenport Daily Gazette, Davenport, Iowa, Thursday Morning, March 6, 1862, p. 2