[501]
your own rights, take care that you do not invade those of your neighbor.
[Applause.]
These orations are mild and cautious compared with the great mass of Democratic harangues on this occasion.
The allusions to
Mr. Vallandigham's arrest as a lawless outrage, and to the States as guardians of the rights of their citizens (with direct reference to the impending draft, which
Gov. Seymour, with the great mass of his party, was known to regard as unconstitutional), and all kindred indications of a purpose to resist the
Federal Executive, even unto blood, in case his “usurpations” and “outrages” should be repeated and persisted in, were everywhere received with frenzied shouts of concurrence and approbation: and a proposition to organize at once to march on
Washington, and hurl from power the tyrant enthroned in the
White House, would have elicited even more frantic manifestations of delight and approval.
The first Draft in the
city of New York for conscripts under the
Enrollment Act was advertised to commence at the several enrollment offices soon afterward;
1 and, as a preparation therefor, the several Democratic journals of that city seemed to vie with each other — especially in their issues of the eventful morning — in efforts to inflame the passions of those who at best detested the idea of braving peril, privation, suffering, and death, in the prosecution of an “ Abolition war.”
That the enrollment here was excessive, and the quota required of the city was too high, were vehemently asserted; that there would be unfairness in the drawing of names from the wheel was broadly insinuated; but that the Draft itself--
any Draft — was unconstitutional, needless, and an outrage on individual liberty and State rights, was more emphatically insisted on.
Said
The Journal of Commerce:
It is a melancholy fact that war, sad and terrible as it is, becomes oftentimes the tool of evil-minded men to accomplish their ends.
The horrors of its continuance are nothing to their view.
The blood shed counts as of no value in their measurement.
The mourning it causes produces no impression on their sensibilities.
Such men lose all consciousness of personal responsibility for the war, and only look to selfish desires to be realized.
What right has any man, or any class of men, to use this war for any purpose beyond its original object?
If they, indeed, have diverted it from that, if they have prolonged it one day, added one drop of blood to its sacrifice, by their efforts to use it for other ends than its original design, then they are responsible before God and man for the blood and cost.
There is no evading that responsibility.
Some men say, “ Now that the war has commenced, it must not be stopped till slaveholding is abolished.”
Such men are neither more nor less than murderers.
The name seems severe: it is nevertheless correct.
Would it have been justifiable for the Northern States to commence a war on the Southern States for the sole purpose of abolishing Slavery in them?
No! it would have been murder to commence such a war. By what reasoning, then,, does it become less murder to divert a war, commenced for other purposes, to that object?
How can it be any less criminal to prolong a war, commenced for the assertion of governmental power, into a war for the suppression of Slavery, which, it is agreed, would have been unjustifiable and sinful if begun for that purpose?
Said
The World:
Whether the weak and reckless men who temporarily administer the Federal Government are aware of the fact or not, it is undeniably a fact that the very existence of the Government they administer is quite as seriously involved, in the execution of the conscription which they are now putting in force.
as it has been in any other measure or event of the war. The act itself, which should never have been framed, except with the most absolute deference to the Constitution
