We are not partial to modes of violence for the settlement of differences of opinion, but we admit the propriety of resorting to such means under certain state of circumstances. The highest justification that has ever been urged on behalf of the “code of honor,” is that it tends to maintain the external decencies in social intercourse, and to preserve society from disreputable personalities and shameless brawls. The Code having been revoked and expunged within the jurisdiction of Congress, the two Houses of Congress have degenerated into arenas, where the greatest amount of course personal abuse and blackguardism is substituted for civility and argument. The immunity from personal accountability seemed to inflame in an especial manner the bile of the band of cowardly hypocrites, who, with professions of Christian love on their lips harbor hate to all God’s creatures. Free of the code of honor, and claiming freedom from personal chastisement of the ground that they were non-combatants, they gave full swing to their foul, calumnious tongues—vilifying and traducing the whole population of one section of the Union, denouncing them as robbers and murderers, and applying every other opprobrious epithet, which their base natures could devise. The Senator from Massachusetts has been one of the chiefs of this dastardly crew of wholesale traducers. Heretofore his vilifications and calumnies were general in their character, spread over the whole slave-holding portion of the Union. In his late speech, whoever, gathering courage from past indulgence, he became specific, and charges the Senator of South Carolina with the effrontery of defending prostitutes; and adding: “Nor was there any possible deviation from the truth, which he did not make.” The venerable Senator from South Carolina being absent, his kinsman, Mr. Brooks, took it upon himself to resent the indignity. We only regret the mode of his proceeding. Had he sent the foul-mouthed traducer word that he would cowhide him on sight, and selected the street instead of the Senate chamber as the scene for the administration of justice, the deed would be commended without reservation by good men all over the Union.
As it is, the castigation may not be unattended by wholesome results. We see it begins to make some of the Northern calumniators of the South put on their considering caps. The New York Times, one of the meanest and most detestable of the set, contemplates the transaction with horror and alarm. It says:
It shows that the Border Ruffian has become the type and the exemplar of a large portion of the law-makers of the republic;—that the revolver, the club and the bowie-knife are to be the weapons by which the champions of Slavery propose hereafter to silence their opponents:—that assassination is to be employed, not only by private ruffians as a means of redressing private wrongs, but by representatives of the slaveholding class as a mode of advancing their peculiar views and establish their own ascendency. It affords another and a very strong proof of the domineering insolence of the slaveholding interest, as an element in our Federal Government, and tends to confirm the impression which its uniform policy is calculated to make,—that it will stop at no extremity of violence in order to subdue the people of the Free States and force them into a tame subservience to its own domination. That success of Ruffianism in Kansas has emboldened the champions of Slavery to introduce it at the Federal Capitol—and everything indicates a purpose on their part to resort to force when argument fails.
What will be the result of such a policy remains to be seen. That men from Free States will be cowed and conquered by it is very probable, unless it is met and resisted. If Southern members are to use the bludgeon as the pistol with impunity, and their victims are to submit without resistance to all this brutality, as a matter of course. Northern men will avoid making issue or taking positions which involve the danger of such assaults. We repeat what we have often said this subject, that it is the imperative duty of Congress to protect its members from such assaults,—by expelling instantly any one guilty of making them, and by treating as a gross breach of its privileges all such personalities as may give occasion for them. Thus far, however, neither House of Congress have done anything whatever in this direction. Both the Senate and the House of Representatives, as Parliamentary bodies seem utterly insensible to all considerations of their indignity and self respect. Unless some reform can be introduced in this particular,—and we believe half a dozen earnest men, all of the right stamp, in either branch, could compel a radical and complete reform,—there is but this alternative: Northern men must suit their conduct to the company they are compelled to keep, and meet the Pro-Slavery bullies with their own weapons and upon their own ground, or they must continue to be the victims of their insolence and brutality.
This sounds hopeful! Northern men will avoid making issues
or taking positions, which involve the danger of such assaults! That’s all we ask. Behave like gentlemen, and
you will be treated like gentlemen. But if you expect to vilify Southern
members and their constituents, and to hold them up to the abhorrence and
execration of mankind, and that with impunity, you will be disappointed. We are
glad to see that the Times intimates
that the Northern hypocrites will no longer shelter themselves behind the
cowardly subterfuge of non-combativeness, but will arm themselves with
revolvers, bowie knives and bludgeons. The act of arming all round—and the
thing distinctly understood on all sides—will tend powerfully to civil speech
and universal peace. Better have a good order and respect for law and decency,
with an occasional outbreak, under the stern rule of the pistol, than the
disgraceful exhalations of blackguardism we now witness.
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