The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 1, July, 1862Various
History
The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 1, July, 1862
Various
Literature, Modern -- 19th century -- Periodicals; United States -- Politics and government -- 19th century -- Periodicals
Even to the present moment, the 'Conservative' alias the
'Democratic'--or the Black, alias the White--party struggles with might
and main to defend and protect its old Southern whippers-in, even at the
risk of dividing and distracting the Union. To effect this, it
has--almost successfully--insolently thrust the Commander-in-chief
forward as _its_ centre, and broadly slandered the Secretary of War and
President in no measured terms, as having toiled to defeat McClellan and
prolong the war. Through all the glossy web of lies, the light of truth
shines or will shine to their disgrace.
Chiefly and most unwisely is the conservative hand shown at present in
opposition to every proposition for confiscation or punishing the
rebels. After having hurried us by their cowardice and Southern
toad-eating into this war; after urging it by their contemptible
procrastination to its present tremendous proportions, they cry out
'humanity!' for the men who have murdered our relatives, and shake the
Constitution for protection over estates which have been directly used
to contribute to Southern war! While every mail from the South gives
fresh instances of desperation, and while we search in vain for a trace
of proof that there is the slightest hope of reconciliation, we are
still entreated to restore every thing in _statu quo ante bellum_, and
bear all the results of the war ourselves, as if forsooth we had been
after all in the wrong. And so the Vallandighams and Davises declare
that we were. 'Abolitionism caused it all,' they say, 'nothing but
Abolition.'
Meanwhile, the question urges itself on us every day with more pressing
power, how we are really to settle the whole difficulty? We see but one
course--the 'Northing' of the South. We are content to waive for the
present all theory or project of confiscation, save so far as promoting
the settlement of those soldiers and emigrants who may wish to settle in
the South is concerned. _This_ question demands consideration, and must
have it. Whether the lands to be appropriated for this purpose come
from rebel estates which have ministered to the war, or whether they are
to be taken from State property, they must be had; for the settlement of
the South and the proper rewarding of the army are matters of paramount
importance. The South can no longer exist in its present social
condition. People who believe, to use the language of their most
respectable journal, the Richmond _Whig_, that:
'Yankees are the most contemptible and detestable of God's
creation; vile wretches, whose daily sustenance consists in the
refuse of all other people; for they eat nothing that any body else
will buy;... who have long very properly looked upon themselves as
our social inferiors, as our serfs:'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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