-We are informed by a member of Congress (not a Democrat) that for the first three weeks of Gen. Grant's campaign against Richmond, Mr. Lincoln and the Cabinet had no idea that all was not progressing well. But, at the end of that period, they came to comprehend the fact, which had all the time been perfectly understood by all who are not demented by passion, that every one of Grant's so-called flank movements was a most ruinous and mortifying defeat of the Abolition army. Now, all who are not willing to lie outright, confess that Gen. Grant has not obtained a single victory in battle since he crossed the Rapidan. But this failure in battle is really the least of Grant's misfortunes. He has destroyed the best part of his veteran army, and has fearfully demoralized what is remaining of it. An army as badly shattered as Gen. Grant's has been in these conflicts with Lee, must be necessarily, to a greater or lesser extent, demoralized. But the soldiers under Grant believe that their comrades in arms have been recklessly and foolishly slaughtered. A gallant officer, wounded in one of the last of Grant's disastrous defeats, in speaking of the useless and horrible waste of life, said in our hearing, "If this is generalship, I have misunderstood the meaning of the word." The feeling shown by this officer pervades Gen. Grant's army to-day. It pervades the country. Of all the unfortunate commanders who have fallen in the public estimation since we began this war, Gen. Grant is the most unfortunate and the most to be pitied. Curses will follow his head to his grave. Of the seven Generals who have commanded the Army of the Potomac, only two, McClellan and Mead, have escaped public contempt; but poor Grant, from the highest, has fallen to the lowest niche of fame. McDowell will be pitied, Pope laughed at, Burnside and Hooker jeered, but Grant will be despised. With better means than all the rest put together, he has wasted all in such a manner as to plunge the most sanguine hope into despair. Never more can he go into a town or village in the whole North where his name will not -Are we not tired of hearing so much about "supporting the government," "resisting the government," "destroying the government," and a great deal of like nonsense? Who resists the government? Before we can answer that question, it is important to settle the matter as to who is the government. Mr. Lincoln is not the government. Congress is not the government. The Supreme Court is not the government. All these united do not form the governing power of our country. Under our system The People is the government; and the President, the Congress, and the Supreme Court, are only official agents to execute the will of the sovereign people, or to administer their laws under carefully guarded Constitutional limitations. All of Mr. Lincoln's usurpations are assaults upon the government. He is the guilty party, who is opposing and seeking to destroy the government! In England, the governing power, instead of being the people, is the aristocracy. Suppress the aristocracy in England, and there is no political organization left-the government of that country would be overthrown, just as Lincoln is seeking to overthrow the government of this country by suppressing the rights and powers of the people. Said Napoleon: "If religion had been taken away from Rome, nothing would have been left." The reason was that the government of Rome was the priesthood. If we take sovereignty from the people of America, there is nothing left of our government. It would be as effectually destroyed as the government of Great Britain would be by the overthrow of the aristocracy, or as the government of Austria would be by ignoring the crown. So if it be true, as these noisy imbeciles declare, that those who are opposing, and trying to destroy our government, ought to be hanged, Mr. Lincoln's neck is the one to which they must fit their halter. He is the traitor who is opposing the government established by the people of the United States. -A foolish editor, the organ of Mr. Lincoln's abominations, says: "The greatest mistake we have made is that we did not crush out the last vital spot of Copperhead Democracy at the start." No, poor fool, the greatest mistake you made was to compel the people of the South to fight for their liberty, which also compelled all good people in the North to denounce your despotism. The greatest good of a people is their liberty. Liberty is to the collective body what health is to the individual. Without health no pleasure can be tasted by man. Without liberty no happiness can be enjoyed by society. The obligation, therefore, to defend liberty is greater than all others; and he is a traitor to a free country who will not gladly devote his life to preserve its freedom. Mr. Lincoln has forced upon Gen. Lee the honor, which we should gladly have withheld from him, of fighting the battle of defensive liberty on this continent, while Lincoln and his party carry on a war of offensive despotism. Lincoln's war is not upon the South alone; it is upon the North also. It is a war against a great principle-the principle of liberty and self-government. is a war against Democracy-against the party that made the Constitution, and conducted the country through every step of its progressive glory, up to the hour when it fell by falling into the hands of a clan of despots and desperadoes. It is possible that we have only entered the field of blood-that the terrible struggle is but just commenced. If, as is more than intimated by the leading Republican papers, the despotism inaugurated over the North is to be continued, then, indeed, the sword is as yet but just started from its scabbard. If we have not a right to our thoughts, our sympathies, our hopes and faith, then shall the battle rage until we have vindicated our liberties and our manhood. We are coming to a point where the fight must be with those who are attempting to rob us of our freedom. The delusion of fighting for the skeleton of a Union, after we have ourselves crushed the soul out of it, is nearly over. For one, we do not hesitate to declare that we a thousand times prefer death It [August, in an honorable conflict to preserve our liberties, than a life of servitude and submission to the bloated despotism which hourly threatens us. If we are not free, let us make ourselves so! We know what we say. We hear, but we despise the threats! We may individually fall, but we know that we leave those behind us who are sworn to execute our last will and testament, which is that of death to the assassins. We are weary of hearing and reading the threats of Mr. Lincoln's satraps. If they stop where they are, all is well-all that is demanded is peace, liberty, and justice; but this we will have, or, failing, we will take our foes along with us, to be tried at that high court from which there is no appeal. Shall we longer walk the street to be threatened with "arrest," or "hanging," every time we exercise the freeman's sacred right of thinking and speaking the honest thought that is in us? Shall we longer owe our peace or safety to the whim or passion of slavering ignorance, or brutal prejudice and fanaticism? In God's name, no! For instance, if we believe that Jeff. Davis is a wise man, and that Abraham Lincoln is a fool, we shall take the liberty to say so, just whenever and wherever we please. If we have not the same right to respect the intellect of Jefferson Davis that another has to admire the ignorance and the trifling obscenity of Abraham Lincoln, let us set ourselves to work to regain that right. If we have not the right to prefer the Government and the Union that were formed by our fathers to this abominable despotism which Lincoln and his party are attempting to fasten upon us, let us strike for that right, and strike as our fathers did! This, then, is what we have to say to the besotted wretches who talk of "crushing out Democrats." Better stop where you are, and learn to carry a civil tongue, or you will be convinced that you are nearer the judgment day than your delusion has permitted you to imagine! -The "Rebel Invasion" turns out to have been only a raid of the larger dimensions, to retaliate for our numerous plundering and burning expeditions in the South. Never before has Lee allowed his army to wantonly destroy private property; and, to his credit be it spoken, that he did not permit the late devastating raid as a means of civilized war fare, but placed it upon the ground of retaliation for barbarisms the Abolition soldiery have inflicted upon his people. For three years he has protested against the unsoldierly and uncivilized fashion of Lincoln's warfare. So has all Europe done the same; but nothing has been able to check the thieving and burning proclivities of the Abolitionists. In this instance Gen. Lee has resorted to the painful expedient of visiting upon the Abolitionists a taste of their own style of war; but he did not, like Lincoln, allow his soldiers to burn and plunder all private houses indiscriminately, for it seems that an individual, perfectly acquainted with the locality, accompanied his army to point out the dwellings of the Abolition leaders, who are considered the authors of the war. If the war continues as long as Lincoln lays out for it, there will, no doubt, be plenty more of opportunities for the invasion of the North; and if we would save ourselves from a repetition of this terrible raid, we have only to stop plundering and burning private property in the South. The Maryland victims may thank Lincoln and his generals for all they have suffered. The raiders, it is said, took away six millions of property, besides what they destroyed. And Gen. Lee could safely spare the large force to do this, even while Grant's army was making all the thunder in its power at the gates of Richmond. This looks very much like treating Grant with contempt. Gen. Lee himself says that he considers that Grant's campaign was virtually ended at the battle of Spottsylvania. And it is true that there has been no general engagement of all the forces of the two armies since that battle. From that spot Lee swung him round into McClellan's old shoes in the deadly swamp, where he, too, is practicing the sublime art of digging, so much despised by the Abolitionists. From a blazing King of Diamonds, Grant has fallen down into a sombre Jack of Spades. All in six weeks! Where will he be at the end of the next six weeks? -The Newburyport Herald, (Mass.,) an influential Republican paper, says: "We never did knowingly, and never intend to infringe upon the Constitution, and trample down the laws and usages, and compromises upon which the nation stands, for the emancipation of slaves in the southern States. Holding to State rights-the right 191 of each community to legislate upon and control its local affairs, which idea is at the bottom of American freedom-the very keel of our ship of state, we do now and have always repudiated all interference with local matters in States to which we do not belong. It was never necessary or justifiable. We have no slavery in Massachusetts, and we would resist to the death its imposition upon us; but if we had slavery here, established by the free will of the people, as just, right and expedient for us, though we might differ from the majority, we would resent and resist any interference on the part of Maine or Vermont, or any other community or government under heaven, to forcibly or unlawfully abolish that slavery. "When even slavery is abolished by violence, at the expense of the Constitution and Union, it will not make the negroes free, but it certainly will destroy the liberties of thirty millions of whites. There can be no other result." This is, indeed, light in the darkness. It is a voice of reason and truth from Massachusetts! Let not the world despair. What is to become of Mr. Lincoln and his war, when Republican newspapers begin to talk in that fashion? -A lady writing in the Macon Telegraph, of Georgia, makes this noble appeal : "A word or two to my own sex. How many of you have passed through this terrible war unscathed? Oh, God, how many of us have lost our all, homes, comforts, and friends! Yet where is the southern woman who would be willing to yield to Yankee despotism? If such there be, let me say to you, death were preferable. I have felt their power; I know their meanness. They have deprived me of Heart strings every worldly possession. have been severed. Yet I would say to those loved ones still baring their breasts-Conquer or die. Many of us may go through life with crushed and bleeding hearts; but liberty has ever been purchased at a costly sacrifice." We envy not the wretch whose heart kindles not with a glow of admiration at these thrilling words from the pen of a woman. We pity the soldier who would not rather himself die than wage barbarous war to deprive such a people of their liberty. -A Republican cotemporary complains of the language we apply to Mr. Lincoln. It is not our fault. No other language would suit the occasion. Shall we speak of a blackguard as a gentleman? Of an ignoramus as a scholar? Of an obscene joker and clown as a well-bred man of refinement and taste? All this would be out of character, and in bad taste. Oderint dum metuant, came properly out of the mouth of a tyrant; but Euripides would never have put that execrable sentence into the mouth of Minos or Eacus, any more than we would put decent language into the mouth of Abraham Lincoln. To say that we shall not speak of Lincoln coarsely is to forbid us to mention his name. -We present the patrons of THE OLD GUARD this month with an excellent likeness of the Hon. Gideon J. Tucker, of whom it can be truly said, but rarely said, that he has never been known to be politically wrong in his life. Among all the divisions and subdivisions and factions that have so often demoralized the Democratic party of this city and State, Mr. Tucker is one of the few men who have faithfully followed one line of principle. He has often found himself in small minorities, but has, we believe, never yielded to the pressure of that policy which would immolate principle upon the selfish altars of personal ambition or mere party succss. We know of no man who has a more consistent or a more honorable political record. When Mr. Tucker was elected Surrogate two years ago, it was demanded that he, and the officers under him, should take the oath of allegiance which Elijah F. Purdy, a socalled Democrat, had caused to be adopted by the Board of Supervisors. This extra Lincoln oath, imposed upon all the county officials, Mr. Tucker refused to take, nor would he allow it to be administered to any officer in his department, notwithstanding the Supervisors had ordered that no county officers refusing to take the Lincoln oath should receive their salaries. This act of defiance of the unconstitutional orders of a corrupt and foolish Board of Supervisors, was characteristic of Mr. Tucker's whole political life. When this war was commenced by Mr. Lincoln, he was one of the very first to denounce it as alike unconstitutional, impolitic and unjust. He was one of the very few public men who had the integrity and courage to denounce the damning usurpation and despotism in the terms they deserved. He never shrunk from the extreme peace ground for a moment. As an unflinching ad [August, 1864.] vocate of peace, he went before the voters of Mr. Tucker is a man of ability, and is considered one of the best political writers in the United States. In 1857 he was Secretary of the State of New York, an office in which he acquitted himself so ably and faithfully as to command the respect of even his political opponents. -It is often asked what the Democrats mean to do. They mean, as a first step, to fill the executive chair with patriotism, and to banish faction and despotism from the administration of the Federal Government. What next they will do depends upon what they can do to restore peace and prosperity to our country. They are in the condition of a skillful surgeon who is called to a man who fell into the hands of assassins. If his wounds are not mortal he will restore him. If Abolition has not killed the Union, the Democrats will restore it. But, at any rate, they will save liberty from going entirely down in the whirlpool of blood. -The New York World, in trying to comfort the poor, says, there are five hundred dollars of bounty money between every poor man and extreme poverty. That is, he can go into the army and throw away his life for negroes. That is a remedy, indeed! The $500 bounty is really only about $200. It would serve his family, possibly, two months, when they would become paupers, and he, probably, dead, or mutilated, crippled and helpless for life. The World gives the poor strange advice-such advice as ought not to come from a human heart or brain. The poor man, of all others, should not go into the army; he owes it to his family not to expose his life to such deadly peril. It is advising him to throw away his life for two months' subsistence, and to leave his wife and children paupers. |