The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 74, December, 1863: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and PoliticsVarious
General
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 74, December, 1863: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics
Various
American periodicals
The new policy once inaugurated, however, the career of treason once
commenced, its authors can never recede. Their only safety lies in
complete success. They must conquer or die. They may in secret confess
to themselves that they have been guilty of a stupendous blunder, but
that they clearly comprehend and sternly accept their position is
abundantly evident. For, if anything is proved in the history of this
war, it is, that the chiefs in the Rebellion believe in no middle ground
between peace on their own terms and the utter annihilation of their
political power and military resources.
Thus, then, my dear Andrew, the insane ambition and wanton treachery of
the Southern wing of your party have delivered the North from the danger
of white slavery, and, by breaking up the Democratic party, have
delivered the nation from the despotism of an organization which had
become too powerful for its own good and for the best interests of the
country. Do you dare to complain of this deliverance? You ought rather
to go on your knees every day of your life, and devoutly thank the kind
Providence which gave you such an unexpected opportunity to escape from
so demoralizing a servitude.
Do not allow your attachment to party names and party associations to
warp your judgment or limit your patriotism. You need have no fear that
any one of the sound and beneficent ideas which the Democratic party has
ever impressed upon the mind of the nation will perish or be forgotten.
Whatever features of the organization, whatever principles which it has
labored to inculcate, are essential to the just development of our
intellectual activity or our material resources, will survive the
present struggle, perhaps to reappear in the creed and be promulgated by
the statesmen of some future party; or who shall say that the Democratic
party, freed from its corrupting associations, rejecting the leaders who
have been its worst enemies, and the political heresies which have
wrought its temporary ruin, may not again wield its former power, and
once more direct the destinies of the country?
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