Wednesday, December 7, 2011

Iowa All Right at Washington

We clip the following paragraphs from the correspondence of the Chicago Tribune:

Senator Harlan to-day gave Garrett Davis, and Kennedy of Maryland, a capital flagellation for their atrocious statements that if the slaves were emancipated the whites in the South would butcher them.  After showing, for Mr. Kennedy’s enlightenment, that there are already 80,000 free negroes in Maryland, whom nobody ever thought of butchering, he proceeded to inform the two gentlemen that they were lower down in the human scale than a pair of Camanches [sic], for the Camanches only assassinate their enemies and never harm their friends.  Mr. Davis at last grew restive under the chastisement, and said his meaning had been misapprehended – he only said extermination would be the result of emancipation, not that he favored or desired any such savagery.  Mr. Harlan replied that that would undoubtedly be the result if such teachings as those of Davis and Kennedy should be generally accepted at the South.  Common people naturally shudder at the thought of committing murder, but if they were taught by their public men in the Senate of the United States that wholesale murder was necessary and inevitable, they might possibly be led even to that monstrous crime, the like of which the world had never seen.

A poem by an Iowa bard telling “how McClellan took Manassas” was handed around in the Senate this afternoon, and created inextinguishable laughter.  A subscription was raised by one of the pages to have it printed, and there is some talk of electing the author of the lines poet laureate.

– Published in The Davenport Daily Gazette, Davenport, Iowa, Tuesday Morning, April 8, 1862, p. 2

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hello. Wondered if you would be interested in a novel about Civil War Reenactors set at the 150th Gettysburg Reenactment? Thanks for posting!

Jim Miller said...

Yes, I would be interesting in reving the novel, please send me an email (see the "Contact Me" tab at the top of this page, and I'll let you know where to send the book.