THE

RETURN OF REBELLIOUS STATES

TO THE UNION.*

TWOFOLD WAR.

However brilliant the success of our military operations has been, the country is encompassed by dangers. Two wars are still waged between the citizens of the United States-a war of Arms and a war of Ideas. Achievements in the field cannot much outstrip our moral victories. While we fix our attention upon the checkered fortunes of our heroic soldiers, and trace their marches over hills and valleys made memorable through all time by their disasters or their triumphs; while we are agitated by hope and fear, by exultation and disappointment; while our brothers and sons rush

* During the spring and summer of 1863 efforts were made by certain citizens of Florida, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Eastern Virginia to obtain the assent of the President to the formation of local state governments, and to the recognition thereof by the Executive and Legislative departments. The views on this subject contained in the following pages, having been communicated verbally to the President, were subsequently embodied in a letter to the Union League of Philadelphia, published July 28, 1863.

joyfully to the post of danger and of honor, although the mourning weeds of the mother and sister record in the family the tearful glory of the fallen brave; while the movements of our vast armies, in all the "pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war," are watched with intense solicitude, let us not forget that there is another war, waged by men not less brave, for victories not less renowned than those which are won on battle-fields.

The deadliest struggle is between Civilization and Barbarism, Freedom and Slavery, Republicanism and Aristocracy, Loyalty and Treason.

The true patriot will watch with profound interest the fortunes of this intellectual and moral conflict, because the issue involves the country's safety, prosperity, and honor. If victory shall crown the efforts of those brave men who believe and trust in God, then shall all this bloody sacrifice be consecrated, and years of suffering shall exalt us among the nations; if we fail, no triumph of brute force can compensate the world for our unfathomable degradation.

Let us then endeavor to appreciate the difficulties of our present position.

BREAKERS AHEAD.

Of several subjects, to which, were it now in my power, I would ask your earnest attention, I can speak of one only.

As the success of the Union cause shall become more certain and apparent to the enemy in various localities, they will lay down arms and cease fighting.

Their bitter and deep-rooted hatred of the Government, and of all Northern men who are not traitors, and

of all Southern men who are loyal, will still remain interwoven in every fibre of their hearts, and will be made, if possible, more intense by the humiliation of conquest and subjection. The foot of the conqueror planted upon their proud necks will not sweeten their tempers, and their defiant and treacherous nature will seek to revenge itself in murders, assassinations, and all underhand methods of venting a spite which they dare not manifest by open war, and in driving out of their borders all loyal men. To suppose that a Union sentiment will remain in any considerable number of men, among a people who have strained every nerve and made every sacrifice to destroy the Union, indicates dishonesty, insanity, or feebleness of intellect.

The slaveholding inhabitants of the conquered districts will begin by claiming the right to exercise the powers of government, and, under their construction of State rights, to get control of the lands, personal property, slaves, free blacks, and poor whites, and a legalized power, through the instrumentality of State laws, made to answer their own purposes, to oppose and prevent the execution of the constitution and laws of the United States, within the districts of country inhabited by them.

Thus, for instance, when South Carolina shall have ceased fighting, she will say to the President, “We have now laid down our arms; we submit to the authority of the United States government. You may restore your custom-houses, your courts of justice, and, if we hold any public property, we give it up; we now have chosen senators and representatives to Congress, and demand their admission, and the full establishment

of all our State rights and our restoration to all our former privileges and immunities as citizens of the United States."

This demand is made by men who are traitors in heart; men who hate and despise the Union; men who never had a patriotic sentiment; men who, if they could, would hang every friend of the government. But, for the sake of getting power into their own hands by our concession, which they could not obtain by fighting, and, for the sake of avoiding the penalty of their national crimes, they will demand restoration to the Union under the guise of claiming State rights.

CONSEQUENCES OF BEING OUTWITTED BY REBELS.

What will be the consequence of yielding to this demand?

Our public enemy will gain the right of managing their affairs according to their will and pleasure, and not according to the will and pleasure of the people of the United States.

They will be enabled, by the intervention of their State laws and State courts, to put and maintain themselves in effectual and perpetual opposition to the laws and constitution of the United States, as they have done for thirty-five years past. They will have the power to pass such local laws as will effectually exclude from the slave States all northern men, all soldiers, all free blacks, and all persons and things which shall be inconsistent with the theory of making slavery the corner-stone of their local government; and they may make slavery perpetual, in violation of the laws of the United States and proclamations of the President.

They may continue the enforcement of those classes of laws against free speech and freedom of the press, which will forever exclude popular education, and all other means of moral, social, and political advancement. They may send back to Congress the same traitors and conspirators who have once betrayed the country into civil war, and who will thwart and embarrass all measures tending to restore the Union by harmonizing the interests and the institutions of the people, and so, being introduced into camp, as the wooden horse into Troy, they will gain by fraud and treason that which they could not achieve by feats of arms. The insanity of State rights doctrines will be nourished and strengthened by admitting back a conquered people as our equals, and its baleful influences cannot be estimated!

To satisfy them, the solemn pledge of freedom offered to colored citizens by Congress and by the Proclamation, must be broken, and the country and the government must be covered with unspeakable infamy, so that even foreign nations might then justly consider us guilty of treachery to the cause of civilization and of humanity.

Suppose, to-day, the rebellion quelled, and the question put, Will you give to your enemy the power of making your laws?

Eastern Virginia, Florida, and Louisiana are now knocking at the door of Congress for admission into the Union. Men come to Washington, chosen to office by a handful of associates; elevated, by revolution, to unaccustomed dignity; representing themselves as Union men, and earnest to have State rights bestowed on their constituents.

If their constituents are clothed with the power