The last Northern movement.
The last movement on the chess board by the
Northern Government is a recognition by law of the despotism previously existing in that country.
Lincoln had waged war — he had let loose his horde of robbers and murderers upon the
South, and blockaded the ports of the
South--he had suspended wherever he pleased the
habeas corpus writ, and filled his prisons with men who were arrested without accusation.
Many of them were retained in close and painful confinement for months without a hearing, and ultimately discharged without explanation or redress.
But the public voice of the
North was lifted up finally against the unconstitutional measures and the outrages of personal rights of the
Lincoln Government; and its unscrupulous partizans saw the necessity of shelling it with all powers necessary for the maintenance of its tyrannical rule.
They not only did this, but they protected
Lincoln from all responsibility to constitution and law, by legalizing all his past violations of law and popular rights.
Thus fortified against popular complaint and opposition with the authority over the person of every citizen to arrest him — to imprison him — and to do with him as he lists — with power over the banks and capital of the country — with authority to force the entire militia into the field — he can act independently of the next Congress.
To make him independent of that body, whose opposition was feared the last Congress gave to the usurper these unlimited powers and secured them to him for a term of years.
Thus the tyrant finds that the unconstitutional acts of Congress give him the unlimited powers of a Dictator.
He has the purse and the sword and power over the citizen, who has no protection against his oppression.
While he has really exercised the powers of an autocrat heretofore, they are now completely accorded to him by the
Congress, and they will no doubt be exerted with a yet more ruthless and sweeping hand.
Many apprehend that this strengthening of the hands of the usurper will greatly prolong the war; that he will be enabled to carry it on stronger and longer than had Congress failed to bolster him up. This may be so. But we are not yet prepared to believe that the
Northern States will lay down and allow him to drive his car over them and grind them into dust.
It can hardly be possible that the remarkable changes in public sentiment which the last elections displayed are baseless and ephemeral.
Nor can we regard the frequent and bold indications of sentiment in favor of the rights and sovereignties of the States among the
Northern communities as pretended or confined to in considerable numbers.
People do not easily surrender their sectional attachments nor their fealty to their municipal governments.
Section alism destroyed the old Union; but the Republican party, which employed sectionalism with this result, cannot itself destroy sectionalism.
Nor can
Lincoln with his ignorant and impertinent constitutional dogmas, ignore States rights even at the
North--He cannot blot out the boundaries of the States, nor abolish their names.
He cannot extirpate the natures and affections, the local loyalties of even the
Northern people.
And when we remember that it is necessary that all these must be annihilated to enable him to exercise the powers he is now clothed with, we are not ready to believe that he will meet no obstacle, no serious opposition in his Administration.
Providence has, during the whole bourse of this great struggle, worked out events for the good of the
South.
Every movement of the enemy has resulted to our advantage.
He has acted with a madness and folly that has amazed the world.
And now we see the supple tools of the
Government in Congress voting it all power and surrendering to it every right — of States and peoples.
Can we doubt a just providence, and fear that by this expedient is to be promoted the power and success of a Government whose inhumanity has entitled it to the execration of mankind?
Time will develop the effects; but having faith even in some of the
Northern communities, and an abiding faith in the justice of Heaven, we do not believe that the last measure of the most atrocious Government on warth will assist materially to avert its merited fate of utter defeat and destruction.
