The Daily Dispatch: July 1, 1861., [Electronic resource]

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An Irish Journal on the American war.
[from the Dublin Nation, June 8.]

As the news from America flows in, the language of the Northerners and of their journals tends more and more to disgust and outrage all who hold the sacred faith of human freedom, and to make them weep in poignant mortification and deep despair.--Well may we despair of popular liberty in the presence of the sight the world sees to-day. A republican people, whose liberties were won by a rebellion, whose independence was achieved by a secession, parrot as glibly as any minions of old-world tyranny ‘"the rebels"’ and the ‘"rebellion"’ as phrases of odium and reproach ! Those who profess to hold sacred the popular will, to reverence the desire for self-government, proceeding to drown the popular will in blood, and to answer the desire for self government by butchery and slaughter !

If what is now passing in America took place in any of the old-world empires, it would be at least intelligible. If the citizens of nearly half of an empire five times as large as all Europe, with an unanimity never surpassed, and rarely equalled, declared, by free poll, in open day, by universal suffrage, that their interests and their feelings demanded the substitution of the Imperial Government by one of their own choice, and that the Imperial Government marched its armies to crush the demand in the blood of the ‘"rebels,"’ it would be nothing new amongst despotic systems. But in a great confederation of republican States, in a system based on the will of the people — based on the right of rebellion — that all this should happen that we now see --that no tyranny or despotism of old Europe ever drew the sword more savagely to put down ‘"rebellion,"’ and trample on the voice of the people, than this same Central Government of a republican confederation — it is enough to wring the heart of any man who believed in the greater humanity and toleration of popular governments. Well may the advocates of despotic monarchy laugh in bitter mockery at those who believe that a people ruling themselves would never spill blood in popular subjugation, and that such murders were done by kings and despots of old Europe !

It is a hideous sarcasm of republicanism to hear the journals of the Northern States yelling for the blood of ‘"the rebels,"’ for their utter subjugation and destruction! ‘ "We mean to conquer them,"’ says the New York Tribune, "not merely to defeat, but to conquer, to subjugate them. But when the rebellious traitors are overwhelmed in the field, and scattered like leaves before the angry wind, it must not be to return to peaceful and contented homes. They must find poverty at their firesides, and see privation in the anxious eyes of mothers and the rags of children. Was ever more hellish sentiment uttered? Where in the annals of despotism, or the records of its butcheries, shall we seek for a parallel to this? Where-- even against rebels who had not a particle of justification?--If the subjects of the most legitimate sovereign that ever held a sceptre had acted as the Southern States have done, would these sentiments not be infamies if uttered on his part? Yet infamy of infamies are they when uttered by republicans against brother republicans — uttered by the descendants of the rebels of '76, against men who, with far greater unanimity, now demand the self-same right those rebels claimed — self-government.

We shall be told that the South had no right to secede; therefore, war upon it is justifiable. When England made war on her rebellions American colonies, she said they had no right to ‘" secede,"’ and that, therefore, that war was justifiable. We shall be told that the South can exhibit no wrongs to justify rebellion. The same was held by those who sought to crush the colonies in their struggle for self-government. But why should we be called upon by republicans to consider these points at all? Have we not been told, as the republican principle, that the subjects of a State themselves, and no one else, are to be judges whether they have provocation, justification on right?

Yet, let us consider that the case of the South, as regards its right to secede, is far stronger than was that of the American colonies to rebel. Under the old monarchical systems no such right was ever tolerated — no such principle ever heard of — as ‘"the voice of the population"’ determining the justice, legitimacy or duration of a Government. The American colonies originated under that monarchical system. They had never claimed or possessed the attributes of ‘"Independent Sovereign States,"’ nor had their connection with the English crown originated in a compact having for its object mutual benefit and defence. What, on the other hand, is the position of the Southern States in the present case? They are not mere colonies, counties, or districts of any State, kingdom or empire. They are a number of ‘"Sovereign Independent States;"’ so styled in law and so proved in fact. Their political system — the political system of the whole United States of America--is based on the fundamental principle of the right of rebellion, determinable by the voice of the people. These several independent sovereign States, of their own free choosing and for the purpose of their own and the common welfare, interest, and protection, federate with certain others to this end. A number of these States declare that faith has not been kept with them in the compact of confederation, and that the cause and purpose of their federal association with certain others no longer urge its continuance, but on the contrary demand its termination. Whether they possess the right to so terminate the connection, is neither asserted nor denied by the deed of Union. This silence is claimed by each side in the quarrel as favorable to its own case. Upon which side the constriction may be said to weigh, is, no doubt, a nice and intricate question for political doctrinaire and hair-splitting controversialists. But what we have to say is this, that it is something more than mournful — it is monstrous, it is an outrage and a disgrace to humanity, that on a point which may be ruled either way, the shocking spectacle must be seen of torrents of blood being made to flow in the conquest — the subjugation --of those independent States, who merely ask for self-government and freedom to decide their own destinies? We say it would be deplorable even if those Southern States were mere colonies or outlying districts of a despotic empire. We say that, in the face of such a unanimous determination for secession — right or wrong, according to construction of constitutional technicalities --this bloody war to force Union on the Southern people at the point of the sword — to sabre them into brotherhood and dragoon them into ‘"liberty!"’--is a blot upon humanity. We cannot pause to weigh the niceties of the rival constructions of the silence of the deed of Union with reference to the right of secession. We turn in disgust from all this, denying that the proof at best can be plain enough to reconcile us to this butchery — butchery to be done, let us remember, not by kings, autocrats, or tyrants, but by Republicans, advocates of popular liberty — themselves the offspring of rebellion. We have often enough and clearly enough declared our anxiety that the great Republic of America might be saved from dismemberment; but far greater is our anxiety, for the sake of the hideous reproach it involves to popular liberty, that it may be saved from the terrible crime of forcing its Federal embrace upon any State at the expense of ruthless slaughter by fire and sword.