The Daily Dispatch: August 2, 1862., [Electronic resource]

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Shall this war ever cease.
[from the Newark (N. J.) Journal.]

Napoleon once said, "America is a fortunate country; for she thrives by the follies of our European countries. But, alas! now she has reversed her policy, and instead of thriving by avoiding these follies, she has not only adopted them — war, taxes, oppression — but the she has gone a step farther, and is endeavoring to destroy her own liberties, the liberties of white men, in order to strengthen or secure those of the black race. The history of mankind presents us with many insane follies of nations, but none equal in to this stupendous folly of Republican America, in this noon of the nineteenth century. A year and a half ago the American Republic, with the motto ‘"E Pluribus Unum"’ flaming in her beak, was developing her resources of mind and body with an external force and an internal freedom that had never a parallel in the world's history. ‘"A continent and two oceans,"’ said the London Times, ‘"are in the hands of this people."’--With a most heroic past, we had the promise of a most glorious future. At peace with all the world and with ourselves — the terror of the nations — a career of national prosperity was opening before us unlimited in extent, rivaling in happiness the fabled Utopias of the poets. Out of the once unknown wilderness, in less than three centuries, a mighty empire had arisen. Upon the scarcely rotted roots of the primitive forest proud cities stood teeming with busy life, and growing like the prairie grass in spring. The boldest and most enthusiastic speculator could have scarcely ventured to predict the destiny of this country, if integrity had continued to govern her deliberations, and wisdom had prevailed in her councils. Her worst enemy, as he looked out upon the vast inheritance of this people, stretching from the Atlantic seaboard to the Pacific, from its inland seas at the North to the Floridan reefs, with all its teeming millions, and all its evidences of prosperity everywhere, must have been compelled to exclaim, with Ball, the son of Poor, as he looked out upon the tents of Israel, whitening all the plains of Moab, ‘"who can count the dust of Jacob, or the number of the fourth part of Israel. As the valleys are they spread forth, as gardens by the river side, as frees of al which the Lord hath planted, as cedar trees beside the waters. "’

All this prosperity and promise for the future was the natural result of the constitutional policy of the Democratic party which had ruled in the land so long. That party held as the policy of its creed a strict construction of the Constitution — equal and exact justice to all who are entitled to its privileges, an antagonism to all forms of sectionalism based upon hostility to institutions whose privileges were guaranteed by the Constitution. Had such policy been adhered to, this nation to-day would have remained a united and a happy people. But a sectional organization, professing for the basis of its creed eternal hostility to slavery, revolutionary in its origin and destructive in its policy, proposed to govern this country by usurpation; to overthrow and set at naught every guarantee of the Constitution in reference to fifteen States of the Union; to shut them out of the magnificent Territories acquired by the common blood and treasure of the Union to maintain this Union just as the Union between England and Ireland is maintained just as Great Britain attempted to maintain the union between the mother country and the American colonies. When the danger of a disrupted Union was upon us, and all the horrors of a civil war menaced, they persistently refused all attempts at conciliation and compromise, and preferred the arbitrament of war to that of peace and conciliation. They refused conciliation and compromise, and when they did so they knew that war would result from the refusal.

The war they invited — nay, longed for — is now upon us, and has brought in its train all the ruin that has waited upon its blood-stained footsteps.--Every fundamental principle of constitutional liberty has been scattered to the winds — enormous expenditures, the result of speculation and fraud, demand oppressive and exorbitant taxes — whole hecatombs of victims have been offered up, and there is hardly a house, as in ancient Egypt, ‘"in which there is not one dead"’--a large proportion of the productive industry is being turned from the peaceful pursuits of agriculture to where the reapers descend to the harvest of death — everywhere individual and national bankruptcy is staring us in the face.

In the legislative councils of the nation every hour makes manifest that the object of the war is not to uphold the Government, the Constitution, or the Union, ‘"but to lift the artificial weights from all men's shoulders,"’ in the language of President Lincoln--to wage "an irrepressible conflict against the institutions of slavery — to rob the white man of his liberty, that the slave may enjoy it. Nineteenths of the legislation of Congress has been this session directed towards the condition of the slave, and how to alleviate that condition, while the awful situation of this Government, intended for white men, is entirely lost sight of. In the meantime the nation ‘"reacts and staggers to and fro like a drunken man."’

Democrats of New Jersey! the hour when you are to meet in council is not far distant. Upon you, together with your confreres in other States, rest the hope of the country. With a bold, vigorous, and determined effort you can help to save it, but it will not be by half-way, temporarily measures.--You cannot save it by endorsing and approving the acts of the present Administration; by endorsing attacks upon the constitutional liberty of the subject; by approving of a war of subjugation and extermination. The cunning unprincipled promoters of this war, who are speculating upon the blood and treasure of this nation, have no desire that it shall cease. Under the specious and delusive cry that Government is in danger, and the Constitution must be upheld, they are uprooting the foundations of the one and rendering nugatory every provision of the other. Read the history of the past year; read the daily legislation of the men in Congress who are hounding on this strife, and then tell us honestly — do you believe this to be a war for the Union or the preservation of the Constitution? If you do not, it is high time you should cry aloud and spare not.

It is time that you should arouse from the lethargy that enervates, and the false security that deludes you. If you believe that the further continuance of this war will only entail untold miseries upon yourselves and your posterity, you have a right to demand that it shall cease. You have the right by all constitutional means within your power to endeavor to make it a finality. If not, you acknowledge a right and a power in this Administration which only belongs to despotic Governments, that are founded in force, and not in the consent of the governed.

Let this war go on in the spirit it is now being waged, and you will dig an impassable guir between the North and South. Remember what Senator Douglas said in the Senate, before disease had dimmed his eye and paralyzed his mind: ‘"Whether the war that these Republicans now clamor for lasts one year, seven years, or thirty years, the result must be the same — a cessation of hostilities when the parties become exhausted, and a treaty of peace recognizing the separate independence of each section. Extermination, subjugation, or separation, one of the three, must be the result of the war between Northern and Southern States."’

Now, the question is, will you wait until a war of years has prostrated every interest, destroyed a six part of your population, and made a waste and desolation of the North, or will you demand peace now? Is the freedom of the negro of more importance than that of the white man? If so, clamor for war. Are the groans of the wounded more musical to your ears than the whirl of the shuttle and the ring of the hammier? Then clamor for war. Do you desire an incubus of taxation that shall make you and your remotest posterity ‘ "hewers of wood and drawers of water"’ to the Federal-Government? Then clamor for war. Do you desire to see this Confederated Government transformed into a vast centralized military despotism? Then clamor for war. Do you want to witness the final wreck of all the glories of our past, and our hopes for the future? Then clamor for the war.