The State Rights Democrat

They have endured with the fortitude of Spartans a long series of more painful and humiliating persecutions than those which caused our revolutionary sires to rise up in arms and fight out a glorious Independence through a sea of blood.—They have seen their lands confiscated to thieving Northern vandals, their children driven from their comfortable homes into penury and want, their women insulted and outraged by brutal negroes, and lastly themselves intimidated by Federal bayonets and threatened by negro mobs until their once peaceful and sunny land has become a labyrinth of snares and pitfalls into which they are in constant dread of being precipitated.

Their injuries and insults have no parallel in the history of any country since the persecutions of the Israelites in Egypt; and yet they have borne it all with noblest fortitude.—It is not for want of an opportunity that they have not risen up and struck down their oppressors. Many a reasonable pretext could have been found—many an opportunity has been allowed to pass by, which, if improved, would have enabled them to fall upon and crush to the dust the cowardly parasites and ignorant mobs who have conspired to harass, annoy and persecute them.

Had they been so disposed, even the glittering bayonets of a Federal despot could not have saved the Northern ghouls and their black allies from the just vengeance of an insulted and outraged people. But they are tired of war, sick of bloodshed and anxious for peace. They cannot be forced into another rebellion. They prefer to remain loyal and true to the Union, even when that loyalty means bayonet and bullet rule, confiscation of their property, pillage of their homes, insult and destitution to their families and even banishment from the land of their nativity.

If all this is meant as a punishment for their rebellion, God knows their Government, as an act of tender mercy, should have shot them down when they gave up their arms at the close of the war. But let our Southern friends take heart. "There is life in the old land yet," and the great conservative and Democratic hearts of the North and West throb in common sympathy in the great work of restoring peace, tranquility and fair government to the long persecuted South. One great battle has already been fought and one glorious victory achieved for the rights and independence of all our countrymen. The warmest sympathy, not only of the great and good of our own land, but of every patriotic man and woman who love their own race and country, are with the poor crushed, down-trodden and bleeding South. Yea, as another glowingly says: "The northern pine mingles its fragrance with the sweet magnolia; the weeping cypress has the protection of the hardy oak, and Democracy is at work forging guns to destroy dishonesty, corruption and tyranny in the land."

One would think we were in the very midst of the late Civil War, to hear the Bulletin shriek "traitor," "rebel," "copperhead," and all the other old worn-out adjectives of the dying Republican party. But all this won't avail. Your party is busted, your power nearly gone and your Custom House positions must go over to honest men. Hurry up! Chant your death-song and prepare to pass in your checks.