The military despotism at Washington.
But for the habit which the South has acquired of looking only for insult and injury from Washington city; but for the disgust which has been implanted in our people by the latter-day sycophancy of that city to the powers that be, as reflected in the loathsome columns of such papers as the Star--we should behold its present humiliation with the deepest melancholy and indignation. Next to packing and burning by a hostile army, the saddest fate that can befall a refined and prosperous city is its occupation by an undisciplined soldiery. It is the fate of Washington to be now in the possession of the most offensive species of soldiery conceivable — of men disguised in uniforms, without personal identity, released from the restraints of home, bound by neither moral nor civil law, reined in by no authority, and embarked in a career of legalized license and violence. The best armies that have ever trod the earth have been demoralized by a few months' residence in cities. What must be the effect of such a residence upon raw recruits taken in chief part from the dregs of society? and how sad the fate of the city itself infested by such a corrupting and demoralizing presence!But it is not in its more local bearings that the subject possesses its chief significance. Is that a Government of the people's choice which requires to be uphold by these loathsome and dangerous appliances? Is it the capital of the American republic thus filled with a rabble soldiery and bristling with bayonets? Is it a free people that these armed and drunken legions are marshalled together to menace? Are the people still free, are the States really sovereign; is it a Government faithful to the Constitution; is it to enforce the laws of the statute book, or to carry into effect the arbitrary edicts of power — that these anomalous and revolting scenes are witnessed at the capital? Jim Lane, the Kansas murderer, marauder and thief — is the moral sense of the North so dull, are its intellects so daft, as to accept him as the genius of order, as the prop of the Union and Constitution, as the knight sans paur et sans reproche of the Stars and Stripes? It required a thousand years to achieve the downfall of Rome, and its ruin was begun and ended by a vicious soldiery. Sixty days have sufficed for the demoralization of the powers at Washington, and, with blind infatuation, they seem to have brought around them the very agents for effecting their speedy overthrow.
These troops will not be allowed to invade the South. If they have the hardihood to enter our domains they will be driven back, beaten and disappointed, to the den which they have made of the Federal Capital — They will be there nominally to defend what will not be attacked. The most effective campaign the South can make against the Federal Capital, now that Maryland cannot be secured, is to keep it full of Federal troops.--They will be there idle. The devil will make a workshop of their idle brains. Their month will be full of complaint, their heart full of mutiny, their eye upon the Government.--Can Congress deliberate freely in the presence of a rude and insolent soldiery? With muskets, cutlasses and pistols in the gallery, what becomes of free speech on the floor? Will the treasury be safe? Will Lincoln himself find in his boon companion, Jim Lane, and his band of ruffians, a sufficient protection?
It was a fearful experiment of the Federal Government to abandon the arguments of reason and to invoke the arm of force. The most dangerous of all menials is an army.--They who invoke it cannot dismiss it. They are at once its masters and its slaves. If they fail to find it task after task of blood and rapine, if they leave it but a short time in repose, it will tear them in pieces. Lincoln has set the first example of invoking force, and the fate of Diomedes may be his, who was devoured by the very horses whom he had taught to eat the flesh and blood of men. Almost every Northern State has deliberately infracted the Constitution; he himself has insulted the laws. How can he expect his Northern mercenaries to respect either the one or the other? The army of Cromwell overthrew the very Parliament that had called it into being, and from which it had long received its orders. But the army of Cromwell was a little more than a band of soldiers. They regarded themselves as a band of saints, and raved from the tops of tubs against the men of Belial ‘"until every trooper thought himself a prophet."’ But, whether soldiers, saints or prophets, they were not too good to cut off the head of their King, and to kick out of doors their Parliament.
The moment the Federal Government resolved to call an army into existence, that moment its doom was decreed. The moment a republican government ceases to stand by reason and the consent of the governed, that moment it ceases to be republican. It becomes then but a military despotism, whose life is ever brief and bloody, and its end suicidal. The invocation of military force by Lincoln was a virtual cancellation of the Constitution, and dissolution of the Confederacy. The Constitution was ordained to establish a "perfect Union," and his regiments were called out to destroy it. The Union was established for the general good of the States; his regiments were designed to carry destruction into half of them. Lincoln has overthrown the Constitution and the Union. His army will in the end make a finish of him.
