Here is an excellent method of preventing dissension described by a stroke of the pen; and, as such, an ingenious people are not likely to lose sight of the uses of a revolution in developing peculiar principles to their own advantage, repudiation of debts to the North has been proclaimed and acted on. One gentleman has found it convenient to inform Major Anderson that he does not intend to meet certain bills which he had given the major for some slaves. Another declares he won’t pay any one at all, as he has discovered it is immoral and contrary to the law of nations to do so. A third feels himself bound to obey the commands of the governor of his state, who has ordered that debts due to the North shall not be liquidated. As a naïve specimen of the way in which the whole case is treated, take this article and the correspondence of “one of the most prominent mercantile houses in New Orleans:”
SOUTHERN DEBTS TO THE NORTH.
The Cincinnati Gazette copies the following paragraph from The New York Evening Post:
“BAD FAITH.—The bad faith of the Southern merchants in their transactions with their Northern correspondents is becoming more evident daily. We have heard of several recent cases where parties in this city, retired from active business, have, nevertheless, stepped forward to protect the credit of their Southern friends. They are now coolly informed that they cannot be reimbursed for these advances until the war is over. We know of a retired merchant who in this way has lost $100,000”—and adds:
“The same here. Men who have done most for the South are the chief sufferers. Debts are coolly repudiated by Southern merchants, who have heretofore enjoyed a first-class reputation. Men who have grown rich upon the trade furnished by the West are among the first to pocket the money of their correspondents, asking, with all the impudence and assurance of a highwayman, “What are you going to do about it?” There is honor among thieves, it is said, but there is not a spark of honor among these repudiating merchants. People who have aided and trusted them to the last moment, are the greatest losers. There is a future, however. This war will be over, and the Southern merchants will desire a resumption of their connections with the West. As the repudiators—such as Goodrich & Co., of New Orleans—will be spurned, there will be a grand opening for honest men.
“There are many honorable exceptions in the South, but dishonesty is the rule. The latter is but the development of latent rascality. The rebellion has afforded a pretext merely for the swindling operations. The parties previously acted honestly, only because that was the best policy. The sifting process that may now be conducted will be of advantage to Northern merchants in the future. The present losses will be fully made up by subsequent gains.”
We have been requested to copy the following reply to this tirade from one of our most prominent mercantile houses, Messrs. Goodrich & Co.:
NEW ORLEANS, May 24, 1861.
Cincinnati Gazette.—We were handed, through a friend of ours, your issue of the 18th inst., and attention directed to an article contained therein, in which you are pleased to particularize us out of a large number of highly respectable merchants of this and other Southern cities as repudiators, swindlers, and other epithets, better suited to the mouths of the Wilson regiment of New York than from a once respectable sheet, but which now has sunk so low in the depths of niggerdom that it would take all the soap in Porkopolis and the Ohio River to cleanse it from its foul pollution.
We are greatly indebted to you for using our name in the above article, as we deem it the best card you could publish for us, and may add greatly to our business relations in the Confederate States, which will enable us in the end to pay our indebtedness to those who propose cutting our throats, destroying our property, stealing our negroes, and starving our wives and children, to pay such men in times of war. You may term it rascally, but we beg leave to call it patriotism.