554 Series I Volume XXII-II Serial 33 - Little Rock Part II
Page 554 | MO.,ARK.,KANS.,IND.T.,AND DEPT.N.W. Chapter XXXIV. |
He has even already assured Governor Hall that no such invasion shall take place. But we must have a very poor knowledge of these Kansas people if they bow to his will, unless he has proved to them by the punishment of Quantrill and his people that he has the intention as well as the power to restore quit and security in Missouri. Missouri must even demand, in the interest of her own honor, that Quantrill be found in some way or another, and tied up to the first tree. As long as this is not done, Schofield ought certainly not to say anything, since he appears until then as the most incapable of all incapables, if not even as an accomplice.
There seems to be only one opinion amongst the German radical papers in regard to the Springfield convention, and that is one of extreme dissatisfaction. The Illinois Staats Zeitung literally denounces Senator Trumbull and the other politicians who took active part in that meeting to defeat the resolutions of sympathy with the Missouri radicals, while the Quincy Tribune goes as far as to say:
Our readers can convince themselves by the report of the meeting that the whole maneuver was only intended to be a puff for President Lincoln, or rather to have him credit the leaders of that meeting with this puff gotten up for his benefit. This seems also to have been the reason why the Germans passed separate resolutions, which contained a kind of protest, though a very lame and invalid one, against the resolutions of the main meeting, but which are otherwise also empty. The party represented at Springfield will not save the country, and it may soon be asked whether the radicals have no sufficient provocation to justify a closer alliance with the Copperheads, and thus as least to shake off all responsibility for a support of this hopeless administration.
A long communication in the Westliche Post is equally bitter in denouncing that convention and its resolutions. The writer ridicules the statement of the Springfield correspondent of the Missouri Democrat, that Illinois, first in war, is also first in diplomacy; compares the proceedings of the Springfield with those of the Jefferson City convention, and draws the conclusion that the former are exceedingly lame, and that the whole meeting was called together for no other purpose than to nominate Mr. Lincoln in his own home for the next Presidency. The article concludes thus:
Let the Messrs. diplomats of Illinois know once for all that Missouri has no desire whatever to try Mr. Lincoln again. He has disgracefully deserted his friends in Missouri; he exercises his whole influence to overthrow their healthy policy; he protects rebels and persecutes Union men because they are radical; he gives the usurper Gamble unheard-of despotic power, and drives away his ow friends in order to make room for pro-slavery men; he insults the only true Union men and coquets with thorough secessionists; hence he need not be astonished if his former friends desert him also. With the consent of Missouri, Mr. Lincoln cannot again mount the Presidential chair. That other diplomats, like the prophetic Seward, or the many sided Blairs, have to expect still less from Missouri, it is unnecessary to mention. The Pathfinder has first opened the road of emancipation on the 31st of August, 1861; he has indicated the way in which to restore a Union of free States on the 4th of March, 1865.
The Post also has the following:
KANSAS AND SCHOFIELD.
General Schofield telegraphs to Governor Hall that no invasion of the Kansas people need be feared, and yet he has issued an order calling on the militia of both States to remain in their respective borders. Why, then, does General Schofield not telegraph or proclaim at the same time that he has inaugurated preparations to make for the future all such disgraceful invasions as that of Quantrill into Kansas an impossibility, and that he will exert all his energies to punish the persons concerned in this outrage and the secessionists of the border counties in such a manner for all time to come that they will never again think of new invasions? Does Mr. Schofield believe that he can keep the Kansas Unionists by his order from exercising the right of self-defense.
What has Kansas not had to suffer from these border counties? All the sorrows she has experienced, all the battles which she has had to fight for her existence as a free State, down to the Sicilian Vespers of Lawrence, are essentially to be ascribed to the slaveholders' aristocracy of those border counties. The inhabitants of that district
Page 554 | MO.,ARK.,KANS.,IND.T.,AND DEPT.N.W. Chapter XXXIV. |