that our Government is grappling with an active and resolute
enemy, whose avowed and persistent purpose is to divide the Union, and
by means unconstitutional and treasonable to erect on the ruins of our
once happy Republic an independent and necessarily hostile power. Bear
in mind that this enemy, with an intense and inflexible determination
which would be most commendable in a better cause, is summoning all its
strength to accomplish its wicked designs, and tell me if it does not
find among Peace Democrats most efficient allies and adherents.

Can you discover in the speeches of your political friends one sentence
that would give a future student of the history of this struggle a
correct idea of the principles for which we are contending? Would not
such a student, accepting these speeches as authentic, reasonably infer
that the Central Government, invested by a sad accident with supreme
power, was using its accidental authority for the sole and sinister
purpose of abridging the constitutional rights of the citizen, by
withholding the privilege of free speech, and preventing the expression
of popular sentiment at the polls? And yet, methinks, an intelligent
posterity will somewhat wonder how such speeches could be made with
impunity, and such candidates receive unchallenged votes, in the face of
such unscrupulous tyranny. In fact, was there ever so wicked a farce as
this "Copperhead" complaint about the denial of the right of free speech
and free votes, from the lips of men whose daily exemption from
punishment proves the falsity of their appeals to popular prejudice? Do
they not say what they please, and vote as they choose, without
molestation or hindrance? Why, a many-wived Mormon, surrounded by the
beauties of his harem, inveighing against the laws of the United States
which prohibit polygamy,--a Roman Catholic priest, openly and safely
carnivorous during Lent, denouncing that regulation of his church which
denies him the luxury of meat during the forty days immediately
preceding Easter,--a cannibal, with a tender morsel of young missionary
in his mouth, complaining that he cannot gratify his appetite for human
flesh,--these would be models of reason and common sense, compared with
the factious demagogues whose conduct we are considering.

In point of fact, their real unhappiness arises from their impunity.
They are gasping for a substantial grievance. Their highest ambition is
to become political martyrs. Now and t