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Tu
the Edditer ov Harper's Weekly:
DEER SIR,—Cousin Sophy and I went
daown tu Concord the other day, bein ez it was the glorius Fourth, to attend the
Dimmykrattic meetin. But I guess they made a mistake in namin ov it, fur there
wasn't a single Jackson man tu be seen fur love nor money.
The funniest part ov the show was
whare thay spoke ov the war. Why, Mr. Edditer, I deklare I begun tu think thare
wasn't no rebellion at all! Awl they tawked abaout was Lincoln's despotism, and
haow he woodn't let 'em speek thare minds (though I thort thay didn't seem very
bashful as tu expressin ov thare sentyments). Thay passed a lot ov resolushuns
abaout the war in the Nawth agin aour Suthern brethren, and ez they was rayther
curus sayins fur Dimmykrats, I thort I'd jest rite orf the substance ov 'em fur
yure benefit. Thay say there nevver was sich a tyrant ez Lincoln, and thet we
air a daown-trodden peeple. Why don't they go and live with thare Suthern
brethren?
But I will now klose with a poim:
POIM.
RESOLUSHUNS OV THE CONCORD, N.
H., "DIMMOCKRASSY" (SO-KALLED, NOT IN HONOR OV GINERAL JACKSON). DEDIKATED TU
HON. FRANKLIN PIERCE, THE HERO OV MEXICCO, AND CHAIRMAN OV THE KONVENSHUN.
Resolved,—This nation's goin tu
reuin—
Old Abram Lincoln's baound tu
strand it. Thare's sum awlfired mischief brewin,
We Dimmykrats can't no way stand
it!
We make a vaow, from this time
forth,
Tu stop awl warfare in the North.
Resolved,—Thet Lincoln's a
userper—
An awful skeery won et that
He shall not lead us wun step
further
Then we've a mind tu go—thet's
flat!
We luv the Guverment ov the
nation,
But go agin its administrashun.
Resolved,—This war shood be
conduckted
Most viggorous, by the laws ov
peece. Thet niXXer folks may be abduckted
Whereso aour Suthern brethren
please, And whereso'er a tremblin' slave is,
He shood be given tu Jeff Davis.
Resolved,—The stones we've thrown
in Dixie Hev brought us tu an orful pass.
We let aour dander rise too
quickly;
We shood hev gone on throwin'
grass.
We b'lieve Vallandigham a saint:
Woe tu the man whu sez he ain't!
Resolved,—We will rekord the
story,
Thet in this war we've acted wust:
It's true, the Saouth fired on
"old glory;"
But didn't we go and hoist it
fust?
We might hey missed the war's
mischances
Ef we hed hoisted olive branches!
Tharefore we form a resolushun,
To make all Lincoln's auders
void—
Tu put his ginerals to konfushun,
So thet aour own sha'n't be
annoyed;
And fortify aour strong position
By firing guns on abbolition!
We'll grasp the fiery suthern
cross,
And bid sich fokes ez Butler bear
it! We'll kover aour defeat and loss
With treason's garb (naow Davis
wears it). We skorn deceit, detest hypockracy—
Make way thare fur the Peace
Dimmockrassy!
CHARITY GRIMES.
HARPER'S WEEKLY.
SATURDAY, JULY 25, 1863.
THE DRAFT.
THE attempt to enforce the draft
in the city of New York has led to rioting. Men have been killed and houses
burned; worst of all, an orphan asylum—a noble monument of charity for the
reception of colored orphans—has been ruthlessly destroyed, and children and
nurses have lost every thing they had in the world.
The event should cause no
surprise. It should have been anticipated. It was not reasonable to expect that
the operatives of this large city—who have never been forced to realize the
obligations of citizenship—should at once realize what is thoroughly understood
by the people of almost every European town. It will take time to make them
understand that every government must, for its own protection, enjoy the power
of compelling its citizens to perform military service. And it will take still
more time, reflection, and information to satisfy them that the Conscription Act
passed at the last session of Congress is in reality fair, liberal, and humane;
that it is far more generous to the operative class than the conscription laws
of Europe, inasmuch as it tenderly guards orphans, widows, and aged parents from
being deprived of their natural support, while it exempts very few indeed of the
wealthier class. Every working-man who reflects will readily understand that the
$300 clause was merely intended to regulate the price of substitutes so as to
prevent speculation in conscripts by the harpies who traded so successfully in
volunteers; and that men of wealth, whose business affords livelihood to scores
of people, would have obtained substitutes though this clause had never been
enacted. Still it was natural enough that the operative class—especially that of
so turbulent a city as. this—should misconstrue the act; should imagine
themselves aggrieved by the exemption of wealthy men on payment of money; and
should attempt to resist the enforcement of laws both new to them and
unquestionably unpleasant in their application. Even if these
ideas had not occurred to them
spontaneously, the leading organs of the Opposition took care that they should
be reminded of their "wrongs." For many days past the newspapers which are said
to speak the views of the
Democratic leaders have denounced the conscription as
unequal, unjust to working-men, tyrannical, and outrageous. The writers of these
articles probably knew perfectly well that, in the present circumstances of the
nation, a conscription act was absolutely necessary, and that, on the whole, our
present act was as fair a one as could be devised. But, in their malignant
partisanship, they thought of nothing but the opportunity of making political
capital against the Government. They sympathized with the working-man in the
oppression under which he groaned. They denounced
Mr. Lincoln as a reckless and
imbecile tyrant. They denounced the war as a needless, fratricidal, and
abolition war. And they wondered at the calm with which the operatives of New
York submitted to the execution of a law which they declared to be utterly
intolerable.
Under these circumstances who can
wonder at riots breaking out? No man likes to be torn from his family and forced
to serve in the ranks. If the individuals sentenced to undergo this fate can
persuade themselves that the sentence is unjust, the law unconstitutional, and
the authorities arbitrary, who can be surprised at their resistance?
Large cities, too, have their
peculiar requirements, and one of these is periodical riots. Every large city
has them. In Paris they occur once in every generation, and are called
revolutions. In London they used to be more frequent than they are now; the
authorities have learned how to deal with them, and now they are generally
checked in the bud by an overwhelming display of military and constabulary
force. Here they are a new thing. The Astor Place Riot is almost the only
example on record; for the Dead Rabbit riots were suppressed almost before they
had broken out. The affair of Monday last bore a closer resemblance to a
European riot than any thing we have ever had here. The leaders and principal
actors in the affair were boys—beardless youths of fifteen to eighteen. Behind
these, and seemingly operating as a mere reserve force, was a body of
men—operatives in foundries and factories, laborers, stablemen, etc. —who did
the murdering of policemen, the gutting of houses, the firing of dwellings,
etc., after the boys had opened the battle with volleys of stones. In all the
crowds there was a fair sprinkling of women, not young, but married women, who
were probably roused to fury by the fear of having their husbands taken from
them by the draft. This kind of mixed crowd, though often good-humored and apt
to be easily managed by a skillful leader, is likewise prone to the wildest
excesses of passion and brutality. The boys and men invariably get drunk at an
early stage of the proceedings; the women appear to become equally intoxicated
with excitement; and all together commit crimes from which every individual in
the crowd would probably shrink if he were alone. Such crowds are so cowardly
that a handful of disciplined troops will scatter them like chaff; and so
blood-thirsty that they will tear in pieces an individual against whom their
fury happens to be directed, or burn a building in which women and children are
situated without chance of escape.
There was nothing peculiar to New
York, or to the Irish race in this riot of Monday. Precisely similar mobs have
been seen in Paris, London, Vienna, Naples, and Canton. They are explosions of
the volcanic element which lies dormant in the heart of every large city. Nor
does the riot imply, as some of the papers try to have us believe, any such
general disapproval of the Conscription law as should lead to its alteration or
suspension. Though the draft was the original cause of the riot, it soon took
the more familiar direction of an anti-negro demonstration, such as used to
occur in this city at intervals of ten years or so before the Revolution of
1776, similar in kind to the no-popery riots of Lord George Gordon, in London,
and the Jacobin riots in Paris during the revolution. Toward the close of the
day, the rage of the mob was exclusively directed against colored people, who
had no more to do with enforcing the Conscription Act than the Pope of Rome.
The question now is—have we a
government capable of suppressing mobs? If we have, the demonstration of Monday
will, after all, not prove without advantage, as it will teach the dangerous
elements the duty of abiding the laws in future. If we have not, it is high time
that we altered our present system, and established a government which could
protect us.
The rioters of Monday took
advantage of the absence of the bulk of our city militia to commit acts which
they would not have attempted had the Seventh and Seventy-first been here. But
there are still thousands of able-bodied men in the city who can and ought to
bear arms in such a cause as this. Let us see how they will turn out. We have
several army officers of experience, who understand the scientific rules of
street warfare; we shall see the dispositions they will make.
There are just two principles
which should govern the conduct of our city authorities. The first is, that the
law must be carried out whatever
it may cost; for if we give way
to the mob there will be an end of law and order in this community, and life and
property will henceforth be held at the pleasure of the leaders of the mob. And,
secondly, all experience shows that, in dealing with mobs, the most severe
methods are the most humane. Mob violence, threatening life and property, and
burning orphan asylums, can only be radically cured by grape and canister. All
other remedies aggravate and protract the disease.
THE
LOUNGER.
THE
QUESTION.
THE slaveholders in this country
having waged a desperate war against the constitutional government of the people
for the sole purpose of perpetuating slavery, and having come to grief, it is
now proposed by some excellent jesters that the victorious people of the United
States shall agree to perpetuate slavery. Having seen a social and political
system plunge us by its necessary development into war—having seen the war
destroy the system, and the country emerge from the field victorious, these
witty persons propose that we give the enemy all that they have been fighting
for, and consent to re-establish slavery.
But for what purpose? Why should
we do it? That the slaveholders may make no more trouble. But did they not have
slavery before, and did they not make trouble? Oh yes, but they were afraid it
would be meddled with. And will they be any the less afraid hereafter? And if
before they rebelled and showed their true colors, slavery was so meddled with
that they tried to destroy us, now that we have seen exactly what slavery is and
have repulsed their efforts, are we likely to hold our tongues?
It is not a question of wishing
to marry negroes, or having negroes for Presidents and Governors, or liking
negroes in the abstract. The question is simply whether the loyal people of this
country, after the experience and revelations of this war, and the long, bitter
disgrace of our latter subservience to the insolent dictation of slaveholders
for the purpose of keeping the peace, are inclined to submit to that
subservience and dictation again, after they have subjugated the Dictator.
Subservience to slavery could not prevent the war, That is clear. Is
subservience to it likely to keep the peace hereafter?
That is the question which offers
itself for "settlement." And the jesting gentlemen ought to remember that the
people have evidently made up their minds that the war is no jesting matter.
They have already answered the question. The Government, which is the
Constitutional expression of the popular will, has already emancipated most of
the slaves. By the act of the United States those people become not our
sons-in-law, nor our bosom friends, nor our rivals in labor, nor voters, but
they become citizens of the United States. What State law, then, can enslave
them?
REBEL EXULTATION.
THE rebels' feeling of their
pinched and perilous condition is curiously revealed by the fierce and frantic
exultation of their papers upon the supposed "magnificent victory" of
Lee at
Gettysburg. The wild scream of delight with which they hailed the news was like
that of a flock of unclean and starving birds over a lion's carcass. It was the
violent outcry of reaction. The fury with which they gloat over the probable
desolation of the Free States is the indirect testimony of the disaster and
despair which they knew must be at hand if they did not win the battle in
Pennsylvania.
Inspired by the glittering
delusion of a victory, they shout that Pennsylvania is now to be laid under
contribution. Philadelphia is to pay millions for its ransom. Washington, "that
foul den of thieves, is expecting the righteous vengeance of Heaven for the
hideous crimes that have been done within its walls." Which remarks, considering
that
Washington has been the head-quarters of the slave-drivers, who are now
rebels, for the last thirty years, are a clear case of fouling one's own nest.
"Lincoln and his rascal ministers are turning pale." "Cincinnati would, we are
assured, burn well.... peopled by as God-abandoned sons of Yankees as ever
killed a hog." "Ohio has towns to ransom and fertile plains to sweep of flocks
and herds."
And as for the prisoners which
Lee took at Gettysburg, the forty thousand Yankees, they must not be suffered to
eat the food which rebels require. Let the guard that attends them on the march
be supplied largely with cartridges and a few light guns, "so that, on the first
sign of insubordination, the prisoners may be slain without mercy." And let the
Yankee captives bring their own food with them. And let them be encamped in the
mountains with batteries commanding them, "and as it is summer weather they will
need no shelter." In the same spirit a Southwestern rebel paper asked in the
middle of June:
"Why not hang every Dutchman
captured? We will hereafter hang, or shoot, or imprison for life all white men
taken in command of negroes, and enslave the negroes themselves. This is not too
harsh. No human being will assert the contrary. Why, then, should we not hang a
Dutchman, who deserves infinitely less of our sympathy than Sambo? The live
masses of beer, krout, tobacco, and rotten cheese, which, on two legs and four,
on foot and mounted, go prowling through the South, should be used to manure the
sandy plains and barren hill-sides of Alabama, Tennessee, and
Georgia....Whenever a Dutch regiment adorns the limbs of a Southern forest
daring cavalry raids into the South shall cease.... President Davis need not be
specially consulted; and if an accident of this sort should occur to a
plundering band like that captured by Forrest, we are not inclined to believe
that our President would be greatly disgruntled."
In the midst of all these frantic
flourishes arrived the address of Lee to his troops, announcing
that they had failed; also the
news of the retreat of Bragg; also the
fall of Vicksburg; also the Union victory
in Arkansas. The whole horizon flamed with disaster. By the ghastly light the
rebels have already read the words of the exultant
Richmond Inquirer in a new
and appalling sense: "Peace will come to us only in one way—by the edge of the
sword."
GENERAL BUTLER UPON RECONSTRUCTION.
AT the late loyal meeting in
Concord, New Hampshire, when the Postmaster-General Blair made a very foolish
speech, Major-General Butler made a very wise one. It was a concise and
conclusive review of the situation; and throughout remarkable for that trenchant
common sense which annihilates sophistry and seizes the heart of the matter; a
characteristic which made a Louisiana slaveholder and Unionist, who until a few
weeks since was never upon free soil, say that if General Butler had been left
in command at
New Orleans, Louisiana would already have returned to the Union as
a free State—a result which the gentleman considered speedy, inevitable, and
desirable. Although a slaveholder and by no means of great faith in the
willingness of colored men to work without the lash, it was clear, he said, that
if the Union meant to restore itself, the war meant emancipation. And the views
of this gentleman are quite as valuable as those of Mr. Cottman and his two
friends, who recently asked the President to re-establish slavery in Louisiana.
It is refreshing to hear the
earnest expression of the earnest loyalists from rebel States; and General
Butler exactly represents them and their views. We extract a few passages from
his Concord speech. First, as to "Democracy:"
"If there is a Democrat here—and
thousands I doubt not there are—to him I say, I am a Democrat; after the
strictest sect of that political religion have I lived a Pharisee. And when we
point to the past for a record—I say it here, in this bright sunlight—there is
no better Democratic record than mine; and he who claims better, let him show
it."
Then as to Slavery:
"And now let me tell you here, as
my deliberate judgment, founded on observation and experience, that the question
of negro slavery to-day is as much a dead issue of the past as the United States
Bank. That thing is ended. Whatever may be the future of this country that thing
is ended, and no man except those who go back to pick up that which is behind
need trouble himself about that issue."
Finally, as to settlement:
"First, drive out the military
power that now holds the States, the five hundred thousand men there. Drive out
the leaders; send them to Mexico, if you choose, to make a proportion of Louis
Napoleon's army; send them any where; get rid of them. My friends, there are too
many to hang; we have a right to hang them, but many things that are right are
not expedient. Send them away; get rid of them; extinguish them so far as the
land is concerned. It must be so; because we could not live with them in peace
when they were friends, and can we live with them as enemies? And when that is
done, and loyal men ask to come into the Union to become a portion of this great
empire, we can admit then precisely as we have admitted Western Virginia, and as
I hope we shall soon do Louisiana. Having got rid of those men who assume to be
leaders, we can reconstruct the Union, and, my word for it, my friends, hear
with me or against me, as the case may be in the future, in that way only is
there to be any reconstruction of the Union. And when the nation is
reconstructed, when its laws are extended over all that great territory again;
when instead of having our attention diverted and driven now as it is to the
question of war, we can bring the whole energy of the public mind and the whole
talent of the public statesmen of the country to this question, then will be the
time when we can deal with and settle, in the providence of God, to our
satisfaction and to His, this great question of what is to be done with the
African race. Before that time, in my judgment, it is of little consequence to
speculate upon the negro question in any shape. Drive Lee and his myrmidons away
from the gates of the capital, and then look after the African. You see I am
ending as I began—end the rebellion, and get rid of the suspension of habeas
corpus; end the rebellion, and get rid of military arrests; end the rebellion,
and get rid of military power; end the rebellion, and become reunited; end the
rebellion, and then settle the question of the African. [Applause.] Let me be
understood—and I think it is best—if it is the best way to use the African for
the purpose of getting rid of the rebels, use him. [Applause.] But deal with him
not as the end, but as tho means; not as a result, but as an instrument in our
hands, placed there by God, for the protection of this country in this hour of
her peril." [Continued applause.]
GENERAL GRANT.
A FRIEND in St. Louis writes:
"Grant is a working man. Years ago he married in St. Louis, resigned his
situation in the army, turned farmer, and drove his own team into St. Louis with
wood. In his recent march (in May) he was three days on foot, with his rations
and baggage, leading his men, not being willing to delay until his horses should
come up. Such a man must succeed."
MRS.
KEMBLE'S JOURNAL.
THE admirable London
correspondent of Child's Publishers' Circular, in his copious summary of new
books, writes of Mrs. Kemble's Journal, just published by the Harpers:
"Last, but not least, is 'Journal
of a Residence on a Georgia Plantation in 1838-39,' by Frances Anne Kemble—a
book which will do more to damage the cause of the South in this country than
any thing that has yet appeared. It is the narrative of a truth-loving,
kind-hearted English gentle-woman; and without attempting to paint slavery
blacker than it is, such a picture is drawn of misery, degradation, and cruelty,
that one shudders to think that beings calling themselves Christian men and
women can for a moment misquote their Bibles to uphold such a devilish
institution."
SAUCE FOR THE GOOSE IS SAUCE FOR THE GANDER.
DOWN to the very day of Lee's
defeat the corruption, incompetency, and hopeless imbecility of the Washington
authorities were incessantly decried and denounced. Presaging disaster, the
Copperheads, who wear a mask of loyalty, took care (Next
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