Sympathy with Rebellion

The following paragraphs, from a recent leader in the Cincinnati Gazette, touches the case of the Democrat of this city as closely as though they had been aimed at it.  Read and ponder them well: –

“It is hardly necessary to remark that when a Government is in imminent peril and fighting for self-preservation, they who try to weaken its hands by depriving it of the public confidence, by attacks upon its motives, and by suspicions that in struggling for life it is fighting for conquest, and that if it survives rebellion it may have a dangerous vitality, are not in favor of its success.  Moral perceptions cannot be so confessed that these can  have any doubt of their sympathy with rebellion; and the popular instinct needs not be informed that they who invoke the Constitution only to throttle the Government, and protect the rebellion, have only that part of valor which consists of discretion, for a pretense of loyalty to the Constitution.

“The charge of abolitionism against all the supporters of the Government, is the means by which these allies of treason furnish it aid and comfort in safety.  There need be no surer test of sympathy with rebellion than this cry.  It is the watchword of the conspiracy.  Without this cry not a single Southern State could have been precipitated into the revolt.  All the aid it has derived from the Government arms and forts, and the property stolen from the North, has been trifling compared with the power which this appeal to ignorance and fanaticism has given to it.”

– Published in The Davenport Daily Gazette, Davenport, Iowa, Wednesday Morning, May 21, 1862, p. 2