OUR SOLDIERS IN THE FIELD-ARE THEY NO SPEECH OF COLONEL T. C. H. SMITH,. DELIVERED IN THE COURT HOUSE, AT MARIETTA, Saturday Evening, Feb. 21, 1863. COL. SMITH being at home, on his way Col. Smith then paid flattering tribute to West, was invited by a number of his the 39th and 63d Regiments, in which fellow-citizens in Marietta, to address the Washington county is strongly represented. people upon the War and the Condition of He gave full credit to the 77th for its conthe Country. He accepted the invitation, duct at Shiloh, and paid Col. Hildebrand and on Saturday morning, February 21st, a very high and deserved compliment for public notice was given of the meeting for his heroic action. After the battle of that evening, in the Court House, at 6% Pittsburg Landing, Col. Smith went upon o'olock. The Court Room was filled to the field, and met a sergeant, who said he overflowing, the standing places being oc-belonged to the 12th Illinois, and at once cupied. Quite a number of ladies graced began telling about the battle. This serthe meeting with their presence. Col. WM. geant said: "Our fleld officers were all B. PUTNAM was called to the Chair. gone, when a Col. Hildebrand came along, On taking the stand, Col. Smith proceeded rallying the men. He gathered up parts of in a conversational manner to give some four regiments, and we all fought under account of the Washington county soldiers Col. Hildebrand the rest of the day." In whom he had met in the field. He first answer to a question, "Who is Col. Hildementioned Company L, First Ohio Cavalry, brand?" the sergeant replied, “I don't a company raised chiefly in Harmar, Ma- know to what regiment he belongs, or what rietta, and vicinity, under the command of State he is from, but I tell you he is the Capt. T. J. Pattin. It was a very fine real grit!" [Applause.] company, under fine carbine drill, and The 36th, Col. Smith first saw at WarPattin was a superior officer. He excelled renton Junction, and the sight of the regiin the handling of his men, and in the ment was enough to do the heart of a fighting drill. The fight at Carolina Church, Washington county man good; no one near Corinth, last Spring, was instanced, could see it and not feel the strongest emowhere Capt. Pattin, with only 48 men of tions of pride; its drill was extraordinary. his own and another company, successfully Gen. — a Regular, and a Mexican repulsed 250 rebel cavalry, who charged war veteran, remarked in his (Smith's) repeatedly upon his command, but after a hearing: "That is the best Volunteer Regfight of three quarters of an hour, were iment I ever saw." driven off by Capt. Pattin's superior skill Col. Smith then proceeded: and tactics and pluck, with a loss of five Now, what spirit sent these men into the killed and twenty wounded. Seven only field? That which broke out in the Free of Capt. Pattin's men were wounded, but States, when the guns of traitors opened not one broke ranks till the fight was over! against Sumter. That which Democracy throughout the world felt when it heard And it is perpetual. There is no limitaresound the first blow struck against its tion of the duration of our national life; supremacy in this land. The unanimous there is no provision for its destructionsentiment that forgot party, thought only only for its renewal, for its duration to the of the country, gave men and treasure end of time. And woe be to those who without stint, and accompanied with mill-would attempt this national life, who would ions of acclamations the march of these destroy this nation! troops to the field. That sentiment re- These are the cardinal doctrines of mains among the soldiers unchanged-only States Rights Democracy. There is in deepened, confirmed. Have. you changed? them no furtive or sinister glance towards Are we no longer your representatives? the morbid and suicidal teachings of secesIf you have changed, what are your sion. Firm in their great oflice of protectreasons? We desire to know them. The ing the mass of sovereignty reserved to sooner the better. We have looked in vain the States, they yield to the National Govto your public discussions for any consist-ernment every just support, and their eyes ent ground of opposition to this war, for turned steadily upon it in these great hours anything that will bear the light. of its trial, are clear with truth and Is it the doctrine of peaceable secession, fidelity. that treason, assuming the garb of States Let us, however, for the sake of the arRights Democracy, put forth? Is it the gument, turn our backs upon it, as traitors right of revolution, or of separate nation- and semi-traitors do, looking in every diality, that a crude radicalism was willing, rection but that to which loyalty points. when the outbreak occurred, to concede, Suppose that the bond between these and bid the revolting States go in peace? States is but that of a treaty of amity and Has the length or the cost of the war chan- commerce between States, as independent ged you? Has the destruction of slavery, by as England and Fraace. And is not any the application of the laws of war, chilled attempt to recede from such a treaty prior your ardor? to its period of limitation, or if perpetual, Let us briefly consider all these: then at any time, a cusus belli, a just cause First, this puerility of peaceable seces- for war? And would it not be the duty of sion. I am a States Rights Democrat of any nation thus injured to punish the the school of Thomas Jefferson and John breach of faith; and to compel a renewed Taylor of Caroline. I shall fight under that observance of treaty obligations? banner as long as I breathe. I shall always Suppose that the Constitution of the go with those who resist consolidation, United States is more than a treaty of who confine the powers of our National commerce and amity, and is a treaty of Government to the strict letter of its writ- perpetual alliance. Do not the crime of ten charter, the Constitution of the United infraction and the cause of war corresStates. I hold that Constitution to have pondingly increase? Are these not still been the work of the people of the several greater if it amounts to a League? a ConStates, and I know that by its terms it is federation? referred to the people of the several States, Certainly you will admit that it is somein conventions or by their Legislatures, for thing more than any of these, than all ratification of amendments. From them, in these; and if you do, what becomes of such capacity only, the National Govern- peaceable secession? It is an absurdity. ment derives its life. To them, in such capa- a chimera. Turn your backs upon it, and city,in their caaacity as people of the several regard it no longer. Cast your looks upon States, it returns from time to time, to have our National Government. Consult your its life modified, renewed. duties in its contemplation. It is more But within these limits the National than a treaty, a League, a Confederation. Government is supreme. The States are It is a Government. It is your Governnot interposed between it and the people, ment and mine. It was made by the peoin the exercise of its legitimate powers, ple. Its life is their own. They have and cannot be. It constitutes our people, conferred upon it the right of preservation, a nation. It is as much the direct Govern- if need be, by the stern laws of war. It inent of the people of the States as their is treason to resist it. And, while the law State Governments. acts only on overt treason, beware also of that spirit of treason which, if persisted | tocracy began this bloody contest against in, will lead to overt acts. Democracy. If you wish to study the causes of a Neither have the secessionists any proper pestilence, go to the place where it began. claim to the right of revolution. RepubliThere you will see in naked and apparent cans cannot recognize the right to revolu-. force the poisonous influences which orig-tionize a Government of the people, to inated it, and which elsewhere, though substitute for it a Government of a class. more hidden and not potent enough to have But if any right of revolution can be found brought it into existence, supply its food in popular government as such, the obliga and are sufficient to maintain its deadly tion that its freedom imposes is such that spread. revolution must only be the last resort, not Where, then, did the doctrine of seces- the first; must wait till the safeguards sion originate? In the Eastern Parishes of that conserve the rights of the minority South Carolina. Yon are aware that the have been successively overleaped, and the Constitution of that State gives to those offensive measures passed, before its right Parishes, which are mostly filled by slaves, can accrue. Every right, every privilege, an undue proportion of the Legislature, carries with it and imposes a corresponding and thus constitutes a virtual Aristocracy, duty. The corresponding duty to the right enabling it by this property representation and privilege of governmental liberty, is to dominate over the much larger white this: that inasmuch as a free government, population of the Western portions of the dispenses as far as possible with force, State. The Governor is not elected by conceding to each individual, and to each popular vote, but by the Legislature. The minor organization of society within its whole system existing there is the farthest limits, the largest liberty consistent with removed from popular government of any the liberty of others, force should only be in the United States. And the class that adopted when all legal resistance has fail- ̧. rules there, though from the fact of its ed. Without this obligation, liberty deowning labor alked by interest in certain stroys itself, and is mere anarchy. Of all provinces of Federal legislation with De-Governments, republics have the right to mocracy,has never been so in spirit, and has be and should be the sternest in the enalways shown itself in its State legislation forcement of such mild political obligations its deadly enemy. as their laws impose. At the beginning of his political career, Thus the secessionists, by their revolt,, John C. Calhoun, a man of great intellect, not only violated the law, but, tried withbut not regarded by his neighbors as pos-out the pale of law and by abstract prinsessed of high courage, contended against ciples, are guilty of the highest of crimes this class. He was crushed, and became against liberty. They do not pretend that their supple tool, the defender of their spe- any measure was passed by the General cial privileges in the government of his Government impairing their rights under 4! State, the exponent of their ideas, the rep- and we all remember that the balance of resentative man not only of this aristocratic parties, at the time of the outbreak, was class in South Carolina, but of all who af- such as to make the passage of any such filiated with them in other States. He measure impossible. If the Democratic perverted the true doctrines of States party had, by the violence of these secesRights, falsely deducing from them princi- sionists, been demoralized, divided and deples at variance with those of the fathers, feated, there was still a majority in the and intended not to check but to destroy our National Government. Senate adverse to the Republicans. The resolutions of the Republicans at Chicago It was in these Eastern Parishes that the were greatly more moderate in tone and secession conspiracy, instructed and com- more conservative than those at Philadelpacted by the subtle brain of Calhoun, phia in the previous Presidential canvass, originated. It was there that the first at- and the legislative measures in regard to tempt was made to take a State out of the the territories passed, with a Republican Union, thirty years ago; that attempt majority in Congress, in the winter after which Jackson defeated. It was there Lincoln's election, accorded with the docthat the first gun was fired which began trines of the Douglas Democracy rather this war; there that a slaveholding Aris- than with those of the Republican party. i On what, in such a state of things as this, place a very large proportion of their num. can you base a right of revolution? bers in the field; that there would be no Certainly no member of the Democratic slave insurrections to weaken them; and party can concede this right to these se- that slavery in those States would have to cessionists. At Charleston we offered them be broken up, to preserve the Union. all that our principles would allow us to My reading in the matter may be imconcede. We said what we would do, and perfect, but I have yet to learn of any for what we would not do. What we would midable or general rising among negro do they declared to be insufficient, and slaves, after being held for a few genera prepared to draw the sword. They did more. tions in servitude. The insurrection in They endeavored to defeat the election of a Hayti was caused by an attempt to reduce President by the people, in order the better the blacks to slavery after they had been to inaugurate disorder and rebellion. And enfranchised by law. It was an insurrec they took care that if any President should tion of freemen, not of slaves. Those be elected by the people, it should be the among us who have such apprehensions of candidate of the Republican party. In insurrection, will do well to study this inview of the legislation in regard to the ter- stance, and in accordance with their views ritories, the preceding winter, and of our oppose any attempt to return the slaves of attitude at Charleston, the Democratic rebels, made free by the late proclamation, party, when the secessionists drew the to slavery again. They will thus aid in sword, was as thoroughly committed to securing us from a reproduction of the the war as the bitterest abolitiomst in the bloody scenes of Hayti within our borders. land. We took our position, and I for one have seen no reason to recede from it. Why the South can place the bulk of its white population in the field, is easily seen. As regards the right of separate nation- A few years ago an ingenious book, Helpality, it can be said to exist only where a er's "Impending Crisis," was much circulanation has had a previous separate exist- ted by some perhaps too willing to blind ence. The people of this land have al-themselves as to the power of the South. ways been one in nationality, and we The fallacy of this book lay in this, that it intend with the blessing of God to preserve compared the pound crops and various them so. other productions of the North, which rep Has the length of the war changed your resented in great part but the necessary opinion as to its justice and necessity? consumption of our climate in excess of the Has its cost? Is not the true economy to milder Southern latitudes, with the agricul fight it out now, once and for all, and tural products of the slave States; and thereby prevent forever its recurrence? from the very great excess of these upon Has the strength of the South changed our side of the balance sheet, inferred an your convictions? Was that your idea, to enormous superiority of wealth in the maintain the Union if treason should prove North, whereas wealth is the excess of weak, but to yield its cause should treason production over necessary consumption. prove strong? The hay crop, for instance, the bulk of It is this military strength of the South, which with us is necessarily consumed in based as it is on slavery, that has made it feeding our stock through long winters, was necessary to choose between Slavery and reported in full in this work. But what the Union; and we have decided accord- difference does it make, in the matter of ingly that it shall not be the Union that wealth. whether the grass in the fields has shall be destroyed, but it shall be slavery. been cut by the scythe, gathered and fed For one, I anticipated this at the begin-out to the cattle, through the winter ning of the war, and expressed to friends months, or whether it is cut by the teeth of the apprehension founded on observation the cattle themselves, grazed by them in in those States, that the population of the months in which in a northern climate the more southern States, whose economical, fields are bound in frost and snow. Simipolitical, and social system was more ex- lar reasoning will apply to our root crops clusively based on slavery, would be found, and grain. because of their want of industrial devel- It requires hardly more than one-third opments, peculiarly disposed to war; that of the labor, to give a white laboring man their system of labor would allow them to a comfortable support in the plantation States on the Gulf, that is necessary on how to perform them. Otherwise we shall the 'Lakes. If we consider the essentials fail in a contest with a class which, through of food, clothing, the house and fuel, we years of counseling with a view to this conshall find that the amount and description test, has acquired unity of sentiment and, of these required in the southern family distinct purposes. They well understand make their cost less than 40 per cent. of the nature of the struggle. We also must what is needed in the North. The farther know ourselves and them. The evidences south, the more vegetable food and cotton are many and plain, that it was the spread clothing are all that are wanted. The of Democratic sentiment and the impulse farther north, the more expensive supplies, towards popular reforms among their own as meats for food, and woolens for cloth- people, which they dreaded most of all, and ing, and these in greater quantity, are re- which they determined to control, by sepaquired. In the North houses are buile sol-rating themselves from the free people of idly, and with a care to resist the rigors of the North the climate. In the South you often find The seceding States have thus far in even wealthy planters living in "mere our national history, shown no proficiency shells." The ease of living, in short, more—achieved no distinction—in art, in literathan compensates for any enervating influ- ture, in science, nor in the mechanic arts. ence of the Southern climate on the white. Their great men have been statesmen or It is from canses growing out of the degra-soldiers only. Their system of labor has dation of labor that the mass of poor cramped their development in all those diwhites in the South care little for comforts rections which belong to a high industrial or refinements, or to accumulate wealth. civilization, and afford a guaranty of peace. It is for these reasons that the enforced The nation they would form would find its labor of the planting States is an enormous pride in war and conquest; its men of gesource of wealth. An hour or two of the nius and talent would seek their career negro's labor per day pays his master the only in diplomacy or arms. The masses of cost of his support. The rest of the ten, its people would remain what they are twelve, or fifteen hours of his låbor, gives proving themselves now, ignorant and willthe masters their wealth-the incomes ing instruments. We should resist the from which come the high salaries that the creation of such a state as strenuously as white employees of the South receive, and we would that of a monarchy. Its presthe dispensation of which makes the own-ence on our border would require the mainers of slaves the ruling class. tenance of an army, whose yearly expen The power of such a social and political diture would far exceed the interest of any system applied in war is at once seen. The debt we can incur in crushing this rebelslave labor is sufficient to sustain in ease lion, and would operate to change our the entire population. Nearly the whole republican institutions and imperil our white population, capable of bearing arms, liberties. can be put into the field, and with much But these are not the greatest dangers less violence to its habits than military to be feared. I cannot express my appreservice brings in the case of a people of hensions in any less degree than by saying high industrial civilization. Had the se- at once that it is my deliberate conviction ceding States half our numbers, had the that the contest in which we are engaged character of its people less passion and is not more a matter of life and death more persistence, it could with its ports to the South than it is to us; and that we open, fight us evenly for many years. have to-day to choose between the utter sup These considerations, while they show pression of this rebellion, or an anarchy with a us the strength of the rebellion, make it all million and a half of men under arms. Conthe more imperative that we put forth all cede a separate existence to the so-called the power that our resources, and the laws Confederate States, and what would be of war, give us to prevent its success. They the result upon the States now united unshow us what kind of a neighbor we shall der the National Flag? Can we not read have if we allow ourselves to fail. the signs of the times? Are they not so We must look the power and the charac-plain that he who runs may read? New ter of the system with which we contend combinations of interests, new disruptions in the face, in order to know our duties and must ensue, and wars to which the blood |