Primary tabs

1

The Work of Traitors.

We take from the National Intelligencer an article entitled "DISUNION PROGRAMME," and to it we invite the attention of our readers. It will be seen that Senators and Representatives in Congress, men sworn to support the Constitution, are plotting treason against the Government, and perjuring themselves before God. In our judgment, the time for compromise and parley has gone by, and the hour for decisive action has come. Traitors and law-breakers should be punished, and every friend of Union should plant himself on the platform of support of the Government and enforcement of the laws at every hazard. The men who are plotting the overthrow of the Government are sitting in our Representative Halls — shaping our legislation to subserve their treasonable purposes — taking their pay from our Federal Treasury — telegraphing to traitors to seize our Forts, Arsenals, arms, etc., and counseling resistance to the laws they themselves have helped to make. For one, we say, away with all compromises with traitors — let us not move an inch in that direction until traitors receive the punishment due their crimes. Why should Congress waste time in making conciliatory speeches, discussing compromises and the like, while traitors are laughing to scorn their pacific efforts, and are perfecting their plans to destroy the Union, and overthrow the Government. We say to the Union men of whatever section or party, STAND FIRM and insist upon the enforcement of the laws and the punishment of traitors as the first duty of the Government. The PEOPLE of the South are not moving in this, damnable work, it is carried on by would-be Kings, Emperors, and the like, in a new government — men who would deprive the Southern people of every vestige of liberty, men upon whose unworthy brows stamped in inefaceable characters the word TRAITOR! No compromise, say we, with such men, and no shrinking, on the part of government or people, from the duty of punishing such vile conspirators. Men of Illinois, we appeal to you to forget party — lose sight of party advantages — see only your country in danger, and rally as one man around your government threatened, with overthrow by the hand of treason. Democrats, we ask you, in God's name in the name of your country, to cease apologising for traitors, and bring to the support of the constitution and the laws the mighty power of your wisdom and your numbers. We ask the people to consign to political oblivion the leaders who in this hour of peril fall short of a full performance of duty to their country. The traitors who are usurping power are forging chains for the Southern people and we owe it to ourselves, to our posterity, to our Southern bretheren, to our country, to liberty and to humanity to punish them and deprive them of their hurtful power. We have the best and most liberal government in the world — we suffer no wrong, we bear no heavy burdens — we have the largest liberty of any people in the world — the wisest constitution ever framed, and the most liberal laws; our people have enjoyed a degree of happiness and prosperity under it unparalleled in the world's history, our government is feared and honored by every nation on earth, and we cannot find words strong enough to express the burning hatred we feel for those who would overthrow it to subserve their own selfish ends. Millions of loyal Union-loving people of the Southern States are looking to the North, where treason has no foothold, to rescue them from the horrors of a military despotism and to thwart the plans of those who would convert the slave States into a second Mexico, by upholding the government with a firm hand and dealing out justly merited punishment to traitors.

Share