The Daily Dispatch: June 5, 1861., [Electronic resource]

[from the Raleigh (N. C.) Standard.]
Obituary of Uncle Sum.

The writer is opposed to extended obituaries, particularly when they run into fulsome eulogies; but the individual whose demise it is our painful duty to record, was so remarkable — had so many connections, and acted so important a part on the stage of life, that departure from Editors' requisition of short obituaries, seems proper. A high authority has said, ‘"concerning the dead, say nothing but what is good;"’ a better guide would be to say nothing but what is true. Had this latter rule been observed, the reproach against mankind of--‘"as lying as an epitaph or obituary,"’ might have been avoided. We think, therefore, that the truth of history, and the good of Uncle Sam's numerous connections, require that his biographer should allude to his faults, as well as his virtues; but we shall naught extenuate, nor aught set down in malice.

As the interest of mankind in the biography of a distinguished individual extends beyond the incidents of his birth, life and death, and is curious to know something of his ancestry, we remark, that the subject of our notice was of English origin, his father being the celebrated John Bull, sometimes called Old England. But, alas! for the certainty of human knowledge! The legitimacy of Uncle Sam has been questioned — some affirming that England sustained to him not the relation of paternity, but of fraternity. It is certain that he was sometimes called ‘"Brother Jonathan."’ Be this imputation as it may, he had a smart sprinkling of English blood in his veins. Uncle Sam, though a Patriarch, (for his family was as numerous as a nation,) did not attain to a patriarchal age, for he was born in 1787, or, as some think, on the 4th of July, 1776. The truth is, he never had a sound constitution. There were inherent elements of weakness and conflict in it. The Doctors, who met in 1787 to assist at his birth, saw this, and proposed various remedies to counteract the seeds of premature death. Some thought that he would die of plethora, others of inanition. The first recommended abstinence, a mild diet, and rigid adherence to a prescribed regimen. One Dr. Patrick Henry predicted that he would be very greedy, absorbing and consuming the substance of the land. Uncle Sam had a very large family of children, but it must be confessed that he was neither a judicious nor an impartial father. As a patriarch or head of a family, he used but little system. Sometimes he was too strict, at others, too lenient — to some he was lavish, to others niggardly; in short, too frequently he showed himself a step-father, rather than a natural father — consequently his children did not live happily together. Bickering, jealousies, rivalries, and accusations of partialities and injustice embittered the old man's declining days. His measures for healing this domestic discord, were injudicious and infirm, resorting to compromises, concessions, promises, bribes and threats — temporary expedients — all of which produced only a delusive calm, to be succeeded by aggravated discord.

Uncle Sam was a great land speculator, and acquired immense farms in the West and South, which he distributed with very little regard to equity, adaptation or pursuit. Many of his children resided in the South, and found out, by actual experiment, that they could not work their lands to advantage themselves; they therefore purchased negroes, and found that they could work the lands to the advantage of both. But Uncle Sam, under the dictation of his Northern children, resisted this natural, profitable and benevolent system of cultivation, excluded slaves from a part of the common land, attempted to drive them away from another, and actually went so far as to say that he would not allow them to be used on the old farms, which his Southern children had got, not from him, but by a fee simple title from their grandfather, John Bull.

These domestic troubles had their logical effect upon the old gentleman's constitution, which, with an imprudence not uncommon with invalids, he sometimes entrusted to mere pretenders to the healing art, to quacks, in fact, who exhibited the most various and opposite remedies; yet each one claimed for his prescription the merit of being a specific. One treated him for weakness of the joints, another for congestion of the brain, and yet another for collapse. One stuffed, another depleted him, until the old man's constitution, like Sir John Suckling's ever-darned silk hose, was so tinkered and patched up that but little of its original stamen remained. Uncle Sam passed through many grand climacterics, none of which seemed to benefit him. The most important of these periodic changes was that of 1860, when he elected one Abraham Lincoln, a creature of his Northern children, to be overseer of his whole domain. This was a great insult and a great injury, for the said Abraham Lincoln was a great enemy of the Southern branch of the family, ignorant of their institutions, interests and character.--The Southern members in vain protested against this appointment; it was consummated on the 25th of April, A. D, 1861, head overseer Lincoln gave an order for 75,000 assistants to join him; for the purpose of whipping his Southern brethren into strict submission to his ill-gotten authority. This prospect of brethren shedding each others' blood was to much for Uncle Sam to bear, in his senility and imbecility, which had been annually increasing. He died the very day the bloody order was issued. ‘"Requiescat in pace."’

It may be gratifying to the surviving friends of Uncle Sam to learn that the most of his Southern children have appointed the Hon. Jeff. Davis overseer, and declare their intention, with his assistance, to wrest the old family mansion from its present vulgar occupants; thoroughly cleanse, ventilate, fumigate, and repair it, ferret out the rate, stop up their holes, smoke out the bats, and thus restore it to the beauty and purity which it exhibited when it was occupied by George Washington, the first and best of Uncle Sam's overseers.

B. Carolinensis.

Hillsboro', May 17, 1861.