The Charleston Daily News

The Duty of the Hour:

[From the Richmond Times, May 19.]

We were favored a few days since with a letter from a very worthy gentleman, who honored us with a great deal of gratuitous advice relative to the manner in which the Southern press and people should deport themselves at this time. Our adviser evidently believes that we should imitate the early Christians, as well as the "Covenanters" in the times of Claverhouse, and weep for our dead where the voice of our lamentations shall not offend the ears of Jacobins and Radicals. All such indiscretions as piously gathering up the bones of dead Confederate soldiers, and strewing flowers upon their humble graves, should be carefully avoided. Neither should we make much ado about the great renown of Stonewall Jackson, "for these demonstrations do much harm."

The Southern people, although denied nearly all the rights and privileges of American citizens, are rendering to the Federal laws and Constitution a respectful obedience which is worthy of imitation at Washington. They are paying their taxes, although they are denied all the advantages of representation, and they are a law-abiding people.

To all this we have but one response to make. But we scorn and spit upon all the attempts which merciless, ungenerous and tyrannical revolutionists are making to dictate to us where our sympathies, affections and sorrows are concerned.

"Treason can never be made odious" by vile and impudent attempts to dictate to the Southern people where questions of sentiment and feeling are concerned.

Those who advise us to try concessions, humility and "reticence" with Radicals and Jacobins, are utterly ignorant of the history of such parties.

The leaders of such parties are as merciless as wolves. They triumph as long as they are opposed by timid conservative parties. Let our correspondent read the history of the Jacobin party in France, and he will find that it triumphed over all who opposed it with timid conservative appeals and arguments.

Such parties must be taken by the throat and strangled. They must be denounced and pursued as enemies of the human family. Andrew Johnson understood the wisdom of this offensive policy when he grappled Sumner and Stevens, as a policeman would two veteran offenders, and boldly denounced them. Andrew Jackson dealt with his political enemies in the same way, and crushed a party far more formidable than the Radicals. The Know-Nothing party was a giant in strength until Governor Wise inaugurated a fierce, merciless, relentless war upon the Order, and it died like a huge serpent in his grip.

So must the revolutionists be met and conquered now. North and South, all Union loving, honest, conservative, God-fearing men must draw the sword and cast away the scabbard. With the desperate, lawless men who have seized the vessel of State there can be no compromise—no terms of honorable capitulation. They have seized the ship, dishonored the "stars and stripes," and run up the black flag of Anarchy, Disunion and Revolution. They have proposed no compromise to the South that does not mean Infamy, "Degradation, Dishonor, Negro Equality, Disfranchisement and Confiscation." President Johnson, sustained by the great mass of the respectable politicians of the North, has determined to rescue the ship of State from these men. His policy will hereafter be aggressive, because it is the only one which promises ultimate success.

We believe that so far as the Southern people are concerned, there is neither honor nor safety in "reticence" and "respectful acquiescence." We are the victims of monstrous and most ungenerous outrages, and the revolutionists, in showing their malignant detestation of us, are trampling upon the Constitution to effect our degradation and ruin. The allegiance which we owe to the Constitution and laws of the United States is not due to those who have deliberately trampled those laws underfoot.

It is as much our duty to protect those laws as it is Andrew Johnson's, and it is right and proper that we should denounce our calumniators, defamers, and traducers. They are not the Government, and it is to that, and not to its enemies, we owe obedience. When the people of the South failed to achieve that national independence for which they battled for four years, their failure entailed no disgrace, neither does our renewed fealty require that we should sacrifice a single feeling or sentiment of manliness to the dictation of such men as those whom the President has most justly denounced as wicked and malignant "disunionists" and "enemies of their country."