Daily Ohio Statesman

The Union Men in the South.

There existed last winter, in the Southern States, a large party opposed to immediate secession, because its adherents believed that the rights the South claimed could be better secured by remaining in the Union than by going out of it. They were in favor of exhausting every other remedy for a redress of real or supposed grievances, before resorting to the extreme one of secession.

Had this Union party, as it was called in the South, been enabled to maintain its position, by the passage in Congress of the Crittenden or similar propositions, the secession movement would have been paralyzed; the formation of the Southern Confederacy, at least in its present large proportions, would have been prevented; the country would have been saved from the horrors of a civil war; and the rebellion, if any had continued to exist, would have been reduced to a mere petty insurrection.

But the Crittenden proposition and all others of a similar nature were rejected by Congress. The Union men, in what are now called the seceded States, became disheartened; their numbers dwindled away and many of them were compelled, as they thought, to accept secession as the only remedy left for the security of their rights in future. They doubtless in this committed a grave mistake; but the sacrifices they then made, and are now making, attest at least their sincerity.

This Union sentiment, in comparison with what it was six or eight months ago, is now smothered and kept in the back-ground in the seceded States. But it still exists there, latent in thousands of hearts, and ready to spring into active exercise upon the very slightest encouragement. The people are not all rebels even in what some of our Northern politicians are in the habit of calling the "Rebel States." A large proportion of their citizens would at this moment infinitely prefer the old Union to any new Confederacy the most sanguine secessionists have dreamed of.

This Union party is still strong in the non-seceded, slaveholding States. It has recently, in the elections in Kentucky, obtained a decided triumph. But this victory is that of a party which, while opposed to secession, is in favor of maintaining the peace and neutrality of Kentucky, until some reasonable and honorable settlement of the great controversy between the North and South can be had. Similar to this is, in the main, the position of the Union men in the other non-seceded slave States. But if the war should be protracted, and all prospect of a peaceable adjustment should vanish, many of these Union men may be driven, as many of their former co-laborers further South have been, to unite their fortunes for weal or woe with the secessionists.

If it be desirable to retain the Border States in the Union, and thus save it from final disruption, it is manifest that the Union men in those States must receive the hearty co-operation of the Union men in the Northern States. They must aid, while opposing the rebellion, in promoting an honorable and just settlement of our great national dispute by such mutual concessions as shall be equitable, honorable, and just, and thus restore peace to the country and safety to the Union.

We have always contended that the Abolition Republicanism of the North would tend to disunion. That this phase of Republicanism had never administered the Government in the interest of the whole Union, were partially mistaken. It is not dead, if dying. It is the genius, and of this there can be no mistake. It is a sentiment most devoutly to be wished, and when secession is vanquished it with wise measures are restored, the South of, eats attack our Asdal R lht Romor, Izelo Rce pabllonnism of to-day attacks the very principles of our Constitution amended