Oxford Times, June 17, 1863
From the 89th Regt.
Editor of Times: I am requested by the member of the 89th N.Y.S. Vols. to send you the following Resolutions for publication. We are now encamped five miles from Portsmouth, Va. on the bank of Elizabeth River. It is one of the most pleasant camp grounds we ever occupied, and I think the pleasantest place in Virginia. How truly we appreciate the rest we are now having, although we have to work seven hours each day on fortifications, yet it is not like constant marching and fighting. Our leisure hours are spent to the best of our advantages for the good of our country. P.
At a meeting of the officers of the 89th N.Y.V., called for the purpose of expressing their views on the important question now agitating the public mind, Col. T.L. England was called to the chair, Lieut, Morris was appointed Secy. Capt. James Hazley, Frank Burt, and R.P. Cormack, were appointed a Committee to draft resolutions expressing the sense of the meeting. Patriotic speeches were made by the officers, and the following preamble and resolutions were unanimously adopted:
Whereas: Certain evil disposed persons and violent partisan politicians taking advantage of the military arrest of the Hon. C.L. Vallandigham, are endeavoring by vituperation and misrepresentation to impress and influence the public mind with the idea that an attempt is being made by the authorities both civil and military to invade the rights of free speech, and whereas such a course has positive tendency to weaken the hands of the Government in a military sense by distracting public sentiment, and to strengthen the enemy by leading them to believe the North is divided on the great questions of the day, and whereas, we believe it to be the duty of every loyal man to counteract so far as it may be in his power the effects of these pernicious efforts, therefore, be it
Resolved: That we view with apprehension of serious alarm and feelings of profound astonishment the late demonstrations in the city of New York, said to have arisen from the course pursued by the Government in the arrest, conviction and punishment of the Hon. C.L. Vallandigham of Ohio.
Resolved: that we condemn in unqualified terms the means adopted and the language used to inflame the public mind against the regularly constituted authorities because of said arrest.
Resolved: That his arrest was simply a military necessity, and fully justifiable under the circumstances.
Resolved: That we, as officers and soldiers unqualifiedly and unreservedly in this as in all thing, pledge ourselves to sustain the President in his honest efforts to crush out treason and rebellion.
Resolved: That we note with feelings of real pleasure the absence from these highly inflammatory meetings of the party leaders whose words and actions go so far as to make up the sentiments of the nation.
Resolved: That the language used and the implied threat against the Federal Administration contained in Gov Seymour's letter to the Albany meeting, was unnecessary, uncalled for, and unpatriotic.
Resolved: That the material interests of the Nation demand a prompt enforcement of the Conscription act, and that resistance to the provisions of said act by the citizens of any loyal State is, in our opinion, disgraceful and disloyal, and should meet with immediate and condign punishment.
T.L. England, Pres't. A. Morris, Sec'y, Suffolk, Va. May 28, 1863
Note: From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ex_parte_Vallandigham
Clement Vallandigham, a member of the United States House of Representatives, was the acknowledged leader of the pro-Confederate faction known as Copperheads in Ohio. After General Burnside, commander of the Military District of Ohio, issued General Order Number 38, warning that the "habit of declaring sympathies for the enemy" would not be tolerated, Vallandigham gave a major speech (May 1, 1863) charging the war was being fought not to save the Union but to free blacks and enslave whites. To those who supported the war he declared, "Defeat, debt, taxation [and] sepulchres - these are your trophies."[1] He also called for "King Lincoln's" removal from the presidency.
Accordingly, on May 5, Vallandingham was arrested as a violator of General Order No. 38. Vallandigham's enraged supporters burned the offices of the Dayton Journal, the local Republican newspaper. He was tried by a military court on 6–7 May (the court adjourning to let him obtain a lawyer), convicted of "uttering disloyal sentiments" and attempting to hinder the prosecution of the war, and sentenced to two years' confinement in a military prison. A Federal circuit judge upheld Vallandigham's arrest and military trial as a valid exercise of the President's war powers[cit
No comments:
Post a Comment