s;
that, feeling deeply in his heart and recognizing clearly in his head
the common brotherhood and the equal essential manhood of the
inhabitants of the Southern and Northern States--sympathetically and
socially drawn, even, to the Southern side, by many endearing
associations and recollections; that, clearly appreciating the
fratricidal nature of this war--its essential non-necessity, if men were
wise enough to avail themselves of better known and feasible,
methods--he still deliberately and forcibly insists, under the
circumstances which are, that the North should not only fight out the
war to the last word of determinate conquest, but that it should, with
wise but merciless rigor, extinguish the cause of the war, and hold with
unflinching hand every advantage it gains, until new institutions and
new methods of thought shall have been securely planted on every inch of
the soil of the South.
Since, even, the last previous part of this series of papers was sent to
the press, new and alarming indications have appeared in various
quarters, of the drift in the public mind--North--in favor of an
easy-going and conceding policy toward the South as the war draws to a
close; a policy which would be nearly certain to lose to ourselves and
to the world all the benefits of the war; to deprive the South, even, of
those higher and ulterior benefits which would come to her also; to
leave untouched the causes of the war, and to foster its early renewal
with more than its former desperation.
Not to mention the reiterated and urgent renewals of the subject of
reconstruction in quarters where we are accustomed to look for a partial
loyalty or a covert opposition to the war, articles like the following,
from the New York _Times_, of November 19th, frequently appear in the
undoubtedly loyal press:
'RECONSTRUCTION.--Since we have been at the trouble of
conquering the rebels in the State of Arkansas--since, after many
great victories, we have now complete military possession of the
State, and have armies posted on its eastern, western, and northern
lines, and at its capital in the centre--we think it would be worth
while in the Government to take steps to reorganize the civil
administration there, and inaugurate a system of policy such as was
adopted in Missouri two years ago, and which has proved so
successful in pacifying that State. The loyal element in Arkansas
is large, as is ma
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