BY HORACE GREELY
The dullest and most benighted mortal can fully appreciate a great victory, such as that of Bull Run or Fort Donelson. So many cannon taken – so many muskets – so many prisoners – all is tangible, concrete, material, computable – to be reckoned up on the fingers and weighed against the fruits of an adversary or prior success. Moral triumphs, on the contrary, are abstract, unimposing, shadowy – and moral qualities are requisite to their clear and full appreciation. They are not less but more real than the triumphs of Force; but time is requisite to their perfect development, and elevation as well as breadth of view to a just estimate of their importance. Yet the last few weeks have been [signalized] by a succession of events which go far to decide auspiciously the great events which now distract our country. These events briefly are –
I. The hearty acceptance by both Houses of Congress of the President’s recent proposal that the Union shall proffer pecuniary aid to any State which shall see fit to rid itself of Slavery. The very heavy majorities given in either House for the President’s plan – 88 to 31 in the House, and 31 to 10 in the Senate – derive additional significance from the fact that three Senators from Border States – Messrs. Garret Davis of Ky., Willey of Virginia, and Henderson of Missouri – voted in the majority. None of these ever before professed or intimated the faintest sympathy with Anti-Slavery teachings or doctrines; but they are all Unionists who owe their seats in the Senate to the Rebellion, each of them having had a place made for him by the retirement of a traitor. They all intend that the Rebellion shall be crushed and the Union fully restored, and their vote for the President’s proposition is a gratifying evidence of their perception that the Union and Slavery cannot both be restored to the palmy estate from which treason precipitated them. Their approval of the President’s timely and wise proposition is of itself a signal Union victory, bearing the seeds of future and beneficent triumphs.
II. The vote of the Senate by more than two to one, (29 to 14,) passing the bill abolishing Slavery in the Federal District forthwith, is another cheering indication of National progress. It is in one sense unfortunate that none but Republicans supported this too long delayed act of justice; but it is plain that Senators who are willing that Slavery shall soon cease to exist in their own States respectively, cannot seriously desire that it shall be perpetuated at the Federal Metropolis. The opposition of the Senators from Delaware is purely partisan in its character and motives; they rely on Slavery to restore the [Democratic] party to power in the Union while perpetuating its ascendancy in their own State, and they of course uphold the influence to which they owe so much, yet desire and hope to be still further indebted. So of Mr. Powell of Kentucky and of several Members of the House. On the other hand the willingness of the Republicans to pass this bill by their own unaided votes argues a scope of vision and a faith in the might of abstract justice which has been quite to rare in the acts of parties and partisans. Slavery is doomed to vanish from the District of Columbia before the next Fourth of July, and the Republican party assumes the undivided responsibility and will receive the full credit of its exile. Should that party be doomed to an early dissolution, its tombstone will be well garnished with a few bold and noble acts of this character.
III. The vote on the 3d inst. of the people of Northwestern Virginia, whereby they expressed their decided desire to constitute a new and independent State, to be recognized and admitted into the Union as WESTERN VIRGINIA, and to be gradually relieved of the incubus of Slavery, is a most cheering sign of the times. The proposed new State consists of thirty-nine Counties, or nearly one-third of the area of the Virginia that lately was. It contained by the census of 1860 a population of 280,641, which was rapidly increasing by immigration up to the outbreak of the rebellion – the chief impulse to this increase being the recent discovery of Petroleum or Rock Oil in some of its valleys. Being considerably larger in area than New Jersey or any New England State but Maine, with vast though as yet undeveloped Mineral resources – Coal, Salt, Iron, Petroleum, etc. – and a superabundance of excellent Timber, there is no reason why West Virginia, with Peace and impartial Liberty, may not have Half a Million of inhabitants within ten years and more than One Million within thirty. – Traversed by Railroads whereon her products may readily find markets in the East or in the West, threaded by Rivers whereon her Timber and other bulky staples may be cheaply floated down to the Ohio and the ever growing cities on its banks, West Virginia needs but Freedom for All to assure her a rapid growth and a glorious destiny. She had but 6,884 slaves in 1860; she has probably less than 5,000 now – many having been hurried off to places of greater security before the advance of the Union armies, while others have hurried themselves away to the Free West to escape the unappreciated blessings of servitude. And these 5000 slaves, the White freeman of West Virginia have voted, shall no longer chain her to a doomed and desperate cause, to which her every interest is irreconcilably hostile. The delegated Convention which lately assembled at Wheeling and framed there a Constitution for the embryo State, left Slavery undisturbed; but decreed that the People, in voting to ratify or reject it, should vote also For or Against a policy of Gradual Emancipation. They did so last Thursday; and the aggregate result is a great majority for the Constitution and one barely less for Emancipation. And though the vote was necessarily light, the whole region being convulsed and distracted by the perils and apprehensions which accompany civil war, there can be no doubt that it expresses the deliberate and unchangeable judgment of the People.
This is one of the most palpable and auspicious results yet realized from the War inaugurated by Slavery for the overthrow of the Union. That West Virginia was thoroughly loyal has at no time been doubtful. Her delegates so voted at Richmond when their lives were in danger from an infuriated mob of slave-traders and their tools during the week of madness that followed the fall of Fort Sumter. A hand full of her aristocracy and a larger number of their ignorant, idle and profligate satellites, were rebels on instinct; but the great mass where inflexibly loyal from the start. But no Abolition lecturer was ever allowed to climb their steep ridges and penetrate their narrow valleys preaching the gospel of Wages for the Worker, while their every vote in Congress has been uniformly cast into the scale of Slavery. Gag-Rules; Texas Annexation; resistance to the unbalanced Admission of California as a Free State; the repudiation of the Missouri Compromise; the years of outrage and indignity to which the Free-State settlers of Kansas were subjected at the hands of the Border Ruffians – in short, every crime of the Slave Power throughout the last twenty years – has commanded the thoroughgoing support of the Representatives in Congress of Western Virginia, wherein Pierce, Buchanan, and the two rival Democratic candidates in 1860, received large majorities over Scott, Fillmore and Bell, while Fremont and Lincoln had but a handful of votes all told, and these mainly cast in the Yankee-peopled city of Wheeling. No voice from the Free States being allowed to reach them, it seemed at least probable that a majority of the West Virginians might blindly plod on in the old rut, eager to show that, while they cling to the Union, they had not ceased to be Democrats and Virginians.
Such apprehensions did them gross injustice. Rude and illiterate as many of them are, they yet have eyes, which the events of the past year have opened to their full dimensions. – Reading little and hearing no speeches, they needed but their own observation to convince them that the origin and mainspring of the Rebellion are to be found in Human Slavery – that on Slavery it feeds and with Slavery it must die. Had they favored Secession, they would have clung to Slavery; loving the Union, they resolved and voted that Slavery must die. And that vote is in our conclusive answer to those who are eternally menacing us with the hostility of the Border States if we do not cease warring upon Slavery. Whosoever loves Slavery more than Union is to-day in heart a subject of Jefferson Davis and hopes to see his sway established and perpetuated; while he who loves the country more than Slavery will find in this vote of the West Virginians an assurance that the Union is to live though Slavery be doomed. The real wishes and judgment of the hearty Unionists of Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, Missouri, and Tennessee, are expressed in this vote of their compatriots in West Virginia.
IV. The Election this week in Connecticut is more than a sign – it is a realization. Parties are virtually suppressed in that State of bitter partisanship, and the People rally in mass around the Government of their country, and in the expression of their stern resolve that treason shall not divide and destroy the American Republic. Gov. Buckingham has nobly deserved this testimonial; but President Lincoln must also feel cheered and strengthened by it. It is an emphatic approval of his policy and attitude by an enlightened and practical people, whose children and grandchildren people every State, and will hear and repeat with filial pride and joy that the Old Folks at Home are true to Liberty and Country.
V. Finally, the echo from Europe of President Lincoln’s Emancipation Message proves that document to be a wiser and more masterly blow at the vitals of the Rebellion than even its warmest eulogists on this side had esteemed it. There is no European journal of decided ability and character, however hostile to the National cause, which does not treat that cause with greater difference since the reception of that Message; while there is no Secession emissary still cooling his heels in the antechambers of Foreign Ministers who does not at length despair of European intervention and aid. – The Falsehoods and sophistries whereby the Yanceys and Slidells so lately hoped to make Europe believe Unionists and Rebels united in the unflinching support of Slavery and at loggerheads on some question of Protection or Internal Improvement, are swept away at a breath; the great underlying issue stands revealed to all eyes, and no Christian State, however famished for Cotton and surfeited with its won fabrics, dare entertain the proposals of the Rebel envoys. Henceforth their mission is null, and every dollar allowed them for expenses is a shear waste of the paper on which the never-to-be paid Confederate shinplasters are printed. And there is not one champion of the Union cause from Gibraltar to Moscow who does not feel the great weight lifted from his heart as he reads the President’s brief and homely but most significant Message, and thank God that he can henceforth stand up for the Great Republic without qualification and without shame.
Such are the brighter moral aspects which the past three or four weeks have given to our great and arduous struggle. Heaven send that the battles now imminent may in no wise countervail them!
– Published in the Burlington Weekly Hawk-Eye, Burlington, Iowa, Saturday, December 19, 1862
The dullest and most benighted mortal can fully appreciate a great victory, such as that of Bull Run or Fort Donelson. So many cannon taken – so many muskets – so many prisoners – all is tangible, concrete, material, computable – to be reckoned up on the fingers and weighed against the fruits of an adversary or prior success. Moral triumphs, on the contrary, are abstract, unimposing, shadowy – and moral qualities are requisite to their clear and full appreciation. They are not less but more real than the triumphs of Force; but time is requisite to their perfect development, and elevation as well as breadth of view to a just estimate of their importance. Yet the last few weeks have been [signalized] by a succession of events which go far to decide auspiciously the great events which now distract our country. These events briefly are –
I. The hearty acceptance by both Houses of Congress of the President’s recent proposal that the Union shall proffer pecuniary aid to any State which shall see fit to rid itself of Slavery. The very heavy majorities given in either House for the President’s plan – 88 to 31 in the House, and 31 to 10 in the Senate – derive additional significance from the fact that three Senators from Border States – Messrs. Garret Davis of Ky., Willey of Virginia, and Henderson of Missouri – voted in the majority. None of these ever before professed or intimated the faintest sympathy with Anti-Slavery teachings or doctrines; but they are all Unionists who owe their seats in the Senate to the Rebellion, each of them having had a place made for him by the retirement of a traitor. They all intend that the Rebellion shall be crushed and the Union fully restored, and their vote for the President’s proposition is a gratifying evidence of their perception that the Union and Slavery cannot both be restored to the palmy estate from which treason precipitated them. Their approval of the President’s timely and wise proposition is of itself a signal Union victory, bearing the seeds of future and beneficent triumphs.
II. The vote of the Senate by more than two to one, (29 to 14,) passing the bill abolishing Slavery in the Federal District forthwith, is another cheering indication of National progress. It is in one sense unfortunate that none but Republicans supported this too long delayed act of justice; but it is plain that Senators who are willing that Slavery shall soon cease to exist in their own States respectively, cannot seriously desire that it shall be perpetuated at the Federal Metropolis. The opposition of the Senators from Delaware is purely partisan in its character and motives; they rely on Slavery to restore the [Democratic] party to power in the Union while perpetuating its ascendancy in their own State, and they of course uphold the influence to which they owe so much, yet desire and hope to be still further indebted. So of Mr. Powell of Kentucky and of several Members of the House. On the other hand the willingness of the Republicans to pass this bill by their own unaided votes argues a scope of vision and a faith in the might of abstract justice which has been quite to rare in the acts of parties and partisans. Slavery is doomed to vanish from the District of Columbia before the next Fourth of July, and the Republican party assumes the undivided responsibility and will receive the full credit of its exile. Should that party be doomed to an early dissolution, its tombstone will be well garnished with a few bold and noble acts of this character.
III. The vote on the 3d inst. of the people of Northwestern Virginia, whereby they expressed their decided desire to constitute a new and independent State, to be recognized and admitted into the Union as WESTERN VIRGINIA, and to be gradually relieved of the incubus of Slavery, is a most cheering sign of the times. The proposed new State consists of thirty-nine Counties, or nearly one-third of the area of the Virginia that lately was. It contained by the census of 1860 a population of 280,641, which was rapidly increasing by immigration up to the outbreak of the rebellion – the chief impulse to this increase being the recent discovery of Petroleum or Rock Oil in some of its valleys. Being considerably larger in area than New Jersey or any New England State but Maine, with vast though as yet undeveloped Mineral resources – Coal, Salt, Iron, Petroleum, etc. – and a superabundance of excellent Timber, there is no reason why West Virginia, with Peace and impartial Liberty, may not have Half a Million of inhabitants within ten years and more than One Million within thirty. – Traversed by Railroads whereon her products may readily find markets in the East or in the West, threaded by Rivers whereon her Timber and other bulky staples may be cheaply floated down to the Ohio and the ever growing cities on its banks, West Virginia needs but Freedom for All to assure her a rapid growth and a glorious destiny. She had but 6,884 slaves in 1860; she has probably less than 5,000 now – many having been hurried off to places of greater security before the advance of the Union armies, while others have hurried themselves away to the Free West to escape the unappreciated blessings of servitude. And these 5000 slaves, the White freeman of West Virginia have voted, shall no longer chain her to a doomed and desperate cause, to which her every interest is irreconcilably hostile. The delegated Convention which lately assembled at Wheeling and framed there a Constitution for the embryo State, left Slavery undisturbed; but decreed that the People, in voting to ratify or reject it, should vote also For or Against a policy of Gradual Emancipation. They did so last Thursday; and the aggregate result is a great majority for the Constitution and one barely less for Emancipation. And though the vote was necessarily light, the whole region being convulsed and distracted by the perils and apprehensions which accompany civil war, there can be no doubt that it expresses the deliberate and unchangeable judgment of the People.
This is one of the most palpable and auspicious results yet realized from the War inaugurated by Slavery for the overthrow of the Union. That West Virginia was thoroughly loyal has at no time been doubtful. Her delegates so voted at Richmond when their lives were in danger from an infuriated mob of slave-traders and their tools during the week of madness that followed the fall of Fort Sumter. A hand full of her aristocracy and a larger number of their ignorant, idle and profligate satellites, were rebels on instinct; but the great mass where inflexibly loyal from the start. But no Abolition lecturer was ever allowed to climb their steep ridges and penetrate their narrow valleys preaching the gospel of Wages for the Worker, while their every vote in Congress has been uniformly cast into the scale of Slavery. Gag-Rules; Texas Annexation; resistance to the unbalanced Admission of California as a Free State; the repudiation of the Missouri Compromise; the years of outrage and indignity to which the Free-State settlers of Kansas were subjected at the hands of the Border Ruffians – in short, every crime of the Slave Power throughout the last twenty years – has commanded the thoroughgoing support of the Representatives in Congress of Western Virginia, wherein Pierce, Buchanan, and the two rival Democratic candidates in 1860, received large majorities over Scott, Fillmore and Bell, while Fremont and Lincoln had but a handful of votes all told, and these mainly cast in the Yankee-peopled city of Wheeling. No voice from the Free States being allowed to reach them, it seemed at least probable that a majority of the West Virginians might blindly plod on in the old rut, eager to show that, while they cling to the Union, they had not ceased to be Democrats and Virginians.
Such apprehensions did them gross injustice. Rude and illiterate as many of them are, they yet have eyes, which the events of the past year have opened to their full dimensions. – Reading little and hearing no speeches, they needed but their own observation to convince them that the origin and mainspring of the Rebellion are to be found in Human Slavery – that on Slavery it feeds and with Slavery it must die. Had they favored Secession, they would have clung to Slavery; loving the Union, they resolved and voted that Slavery must die. And that vote is in our conclusive answer to those who are eternally menacing us with the hostility of the Border States if we do not cease warring upon Slavery. Whosoever loves Slavery more than Union is to-day in heart a subject of Jefferson Davis and hopes to see his sway established and perpetuated; while he who loves the country more than Slavery will find in this vote of the West Virginians an assurance that the Union is to live though Slavery be doomed. The real wishes and judgment of the hearty Unionists of Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, Missouri, and Tennessee, are expressed in this vote of their compatriots in West Virginia.
IV. The Election this week in Connecticut is more than a sign – it is a realization. Parties are virtually suppressed in that State of bitter partisanship, and the People rally in mass around the Government of their country, and in the expression of their stern resolve that treason shall not divide and destroy the American Republic. Gov. Buckingham has nobly deserved this testimonial; but President Lincoln must also feel cheered and strengthened by it. It is an emphatic approval of his policy and attitude by an enlightened and practical people, whose children and grandchildren people every State, and will hear and repeat with filial pride and joy that the Old Folks at Home are true to Liberty and Country.
V. Finally, the echo from Europe of President Lincoln’s Emancipation Message proves that document to be a wiser and more masterly blow at the vitals of the Rebellion than even its warmest eulogists on this side had esteemed it. There is no European journal of decided ability and character, however hostile to the National cause, which does not treat that cause with greater difference since the reception of that Message; while there is no Secession emissary still cooling his heels in the antechambers of Foreign Ministers who does not at length despair of European intervention and aid. – The Falsehoods and sophistries whereby the Yanceys and Slidells so lately hoped to make Europe believe Unionists and Rebels united in the unflinching support of Slavery and at loggerheads on some question of Protection or Internal Improvement, are swept away at a breath; the great underlying issue stands revealed to all eyes, and no Christian State, however famished for Cotton and surfeited with its won fabrics, dare entertain the proposals of the Rebel envoys. Henceforth their mission is null, and every dollar allowed them for expenses is a shear waste of the paper on which the never-to-be paid Confederate shinplasters are printed. And there is not one champion of the Union cause from Gibraltar to Moscow who does not feel the great weight lifted from his heart as he reads the President’s brief and homely but most significant Message, and thank God that he can henceforth stand up for the Great Republic without qualification and without shame.
Such are the brighter moral aspects which the past three or four weeks have given to our great and arduous struggle. Heaven send that the battles now imminent may in no wise countervail them!
– Published in the Burlington Weekly Hawk-Eye, Burlington, Iowa, Saturday, December 19, 1862
