The Great Conspiracy, Complete

by John Alexander Logan

"This modern Emperor, this Tiberius, a sort of a Tiberius, and his Sejanus, a sort of a Sejanus, the head of the War Department, are organizing daily their Military Courts to try civilians. * * *

"Sir, I want one labor of love before I die. I want the President of the United States, I want his Secretary of War, I want some of his high officers in Military command to bring a civilian to a Military execution, and me to have the proud privilege of prosecuting them for murder. * * * I want the law and its just retribution to be visited upon these great delinquents.

"I would sooner, if I had the power, bring about such an atonement as that, than I would even put down the Rebellion. It would be a greater victory in favor of Freedom and Constitutional Liberty, a thousand-fold, of all the People of America besides, than the subjugation of the Rebel States could possibly be."

But there seemed to be no end to the' attacks upon the Administration, made, in both Houses, by these peculiar Peace-Democrats. Union blood might flow in torrents on the fields of the rebellious South, atrocities innumerable might be committed by the Rebels, cold-blooded massacres of Blacks and Whites, as at Fort Pillow, might occur without rebuke from them; but let the Administration even dare to sneeze, and—woe to the Administration.

It was not the Thirteenth Amendment only, that they assailed, but everything else which the Administration thought might help it in its effort to put down the Rebellion. Nor was it so much their malignant activity in opposition to any one measure intended to strengthen the hands of the Union, but to all such measures; and superadded to this was the incessant bringing forward, in both Houses of Congress, by these restless Rebel-sympathizers, of Peace-Resolutions, the mere presentation of which would be, and were, construed by the Rebel authorities at Richmond, as evidences of a weakening.

Even some of the best of the Peace-Democrats, like S. S. Cox, for instance, not only assailed the Tariff—under which the Union Republican Party sought to protect and build up American Industry, as well as to raise as much revenue as possible to help meet the enormous current expenditures of the Government—but also denounced our great paper-money system, which alone enabled us to secure means to meet all deficiencies in the revenues otherwise obtained, and thus to ultimately conquer the hosts of Rebellion.

He declared (June 2, 1864) that "The People are the victims of the joint-robbery of a system of bounties under the guise of duties, and of an inconvertible and depreciated paper currency under the guise of money," and added: "No man is now so wise and gifted that he can save this Nation from bankruptcy. * * * No borrowing system can save us. The scheme of making greenbacks a legal tender, which enabled the debtor to cheat his creditor, thereby playing the old game of kingcraft, to debase the currency in order to aid the designs of despotism, may float us for a while amidst the fluctuations and bubbles of the day; but as no one possesses the power to repeal the Law of the Almighty, which decrees (and as our Constitution has established) that gold and silver shall be the standard of value in the World, so they will ever thus remain, notwithstanding the legislation of Congress."

Not satisfied with this sort of "fire in the rear," it was attempted by means of Democratic Free-Trade and antipaper-currency sophistries, to arouse jealousies, heart-burnings and resentful feelings in the breasts of those living in different parts of the Union—to implant bitter Sectional antagonisms and implacable resentments between the Eastern States, on the one hand, and the Western States, on the other—and thus, by dividing, to weaken the Loyal Union States.

That this was the cold-blooded purpose of all who pursued this course, would no doubt be warmly denied by some of them; but the fact remains no less clear, that the effect of that course, whether so intended or not, was to give aid and comfort to the Enemy at that critical time when the Nation most needed all the men, money, and moral as well as material support, it was possible to get, to put an end to the bloody Rebellion, now—under the continuous poundings of Grant's Army upon that of Lee in Virginia, and the advance of Sherman's Army upon that of Johnston in Georgia—tottering to its overthrow. Thus this same speaker (S. S. Cox), in his untimely speech, undertook to divide the Union-loving States "into two great classes: the Protected States and the Unprotected States;" and—having declared that "The Manufacturing States, mainly the New England States and Pennsylvania, are the Protected States," and "The Agricultural States," mainly the eleven Western States, which he named, "are the Unprotected States"—proceeded to intemperately and violently arraign New England, and especially Massachusetts, in the same way that had years before been adopted by the old Conspirators of the South when they sought—alas, too successfully!—to inflame the minds of Southern citizens to a condition of unreasoning frenzy which made attempted Nullification and subsequent armed Rebellion and Secession possible.

Well might the thoroughly loyal Grinnell, of Iowa—after exposing what he termed the "sophistry of figures" by which Mr. Cox had seen fit "to misrepresent and traduce" the Western States—exclaim: "Sir, I have no words which I can use to execrate sufficiently such language, in arraying the Sections in opposition during a time of War; as if we were not one People, descended from one stock, having one interest, and bound up in one destiny!"