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
But, returning to considerations of more immediate importance, what, I
ask, is the obvious duty of every true and loyal citizen in such a
crisis as this? You resent, as insulting, any imputation of disloyalty,
and therefore I have a right to infer that you are unwilling to be
ranked among the enemies of your country. But who are those enemies?
Clearly, those whose avowed intention or whose thinly disguised design
is, to divide the Union and to rend the Republic in twain. How are those
enemies to be overcome? Only by a hearty and earnest cooeperation with
the measures devised by our legally constituted Government for the
suppression of the Rebellion. I can easily understand that you may not
be willing to give your cordial assent to all the measures and all the
appointments of the Administration. It is not the Administration which
you would have selected, or for which you voted. But, nevertheless, it
is our rightful government, and nothing else can save the nation from
absolute anarchy. Postpone, therefore, I beseech you, all merely
partisan prejudices, and remember only that the Union is in danger. You
are a Democrat. Adopt, then, during the continuance of this war, the
noble sentiments of a distinguished Western Democrat:[J]--"The whole
object of the Rebellion is to destroy the principle of Democracy. The
party which stands by the Government is the true Democracy. Every
soldier in the army is a true Democrat. Every man who lifts his head
above party trammels is a Democrat. And every man who permits old issues
to stand in the way of a vigorous prosecution of the war cannot, in my
opinion, have any claims on the party." By such men and such utterances
will the Democratic party secure the respect and admiration of mankind;
while those spurious Democrats, whose hearts are with the South while
their homes are in the North, whose voice is the voice of Jacob while
their hands are the hands of Esau, whose first slavish impulse is to
kiss the rod which smites them, and who long for nothing so much as the
triumph of their Southern masters, have earned, and will surely receive,
the contempt and detestation of all honest men, now and forever.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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