A "Secesh" Flag Hoisted in Honolulu under Government Patronage (1862)

Source: Pacific Commercial Advertiser. Honolulu: September 25, 1862.

"We never presumed for a moment to mock the genuine sorrow of the Union men, the fearful ordeal, the great calamity of a whole land, by aping on a small scale the heart-rending exhibition of a divided people."

"We never by "word or line" or "on the street" gave the warmest of the least sympathy to any course that tended to dismember the Union by revolt or disenfranchise a portion of it by conquest."

Thus spake the official organ in March, 1862. Six months later, and in its last issue, it whistles to another tune:

"We are grateful for our neighbor's permission to crow over the retreat of M'Clellan."

"And yet history tells us that for more than 60 years, those children of moral and social darkness [the slaveholders] ruled the land and made it a rose in the desert, a star of hope to the oppressed of every clime, a flaming sword in the horizon of their oppressors."

"We do not contemplate nor do we wish for a restoration of the Union under the name of the "United Northern States and their Dependencies South." "we do not wish a Union of boundaries, if thereby the unity of sentiment and feeling, which we knew in the days of old, and which is the living force of every nationality, must be scarified." 

In March last, we charged the editor of the Government organ with being a secessionist. He denied it; will he do so again? His last issue is filled with a bitter tirade against the American Government and with loving sympathy for the South; and yet he says he is no secessionist. If there is any meaning in language, then the last Polynesian is openly and unequivocally for the rebellion. And yet he says, "we never by word or line gave the least sympathy," &c. Perhaps he has not got the hang of the English language yet, or does not understand the meaning of the words he uses; and if so, he had better take hold and learn it again. We will furnish him with an Elementary Grammar, if wanted, to correct the grammatical errors observable in every paragraph.

But seriously, who is this that seeks to fan the embers of treason, though in a foreign land? What journal is it that seeks to laud the gallantry and privations of rebels against their government? It is a Press supported by a government that affects to be friendly to the nation within whose borders the rebellion unhappily exists. It is a Press to which $3800 per annum are voted from the public funds, that aids in misrepresenting the most liberal government on earth. Talk about what a "disinterested, impartial journal" should do, when such baseness is exhibited in one owned by a government avowing friendship to the nation thus insulted.

Imagine the case changed, and Ireland in rebellion against England. Would Mr. Wyllie or the Government permit the Polynesian to malign England in behalf of the long-enslaved Irish, even should the editor's sympathies run that way as strongly as they do for the slave-holders? Or, bring the case a little nearer home-suppose a rebellion existed on Maui or Hawaii. The editor's sympathies might be with the rebels, as they always are with traitors and treason, but would he be permitted to prostitute the paper under his charge to aid and comfort them? No, never. We speak of the Southern rebellion, as we would speak of an Irish rebellion, or of a rebellion in Hawaii nei, even if headed or defended by the Polynesian corps. Rebellion or treason anywhere and everywhere, should me with the unqualified rebuke of all. To encourage it is to become a participant in it, and if this government, through its official organ, encourages Southern rebellion, it is guilty of an open breach of international courtesy and friendship, and affords another evidence of the impolicy of owning a newspaper. 

The American Government is not now fighting for the North, nor for the South, but for the Union, for the integrity of the American republic, and if it cannot be restored with slavery, it will be restored without it, the accursed bone of contention removed, and, if necessary, every rebel hung, not as slaveholders, but as rebels. The subjugation of the South and the abolition of slavery will be the results of the war, not the objects of it. The North has not begun to feel the weight of the contest, and reverses alone will bring it to that point. Should such reverses come then, they can only hasten the uprising of the people to that point that is needed to suppress the rebellion. Many have feared lest the arms of the government might be too successful, and the war be terminated before the public mind has become unanimous on the great slavery question-unanimous for the removal of the cause of the trouble. But there is a PROVIDENCE that overrules the issue of this war, and if it is his design to terminate slavery with it, the temporary victories of the rebels may prolong the struggle, but will make the issue more decisive. We trust that this war may not cease, even if it lasts for ten years, till the last vestige of slavery is destroyed, and the accursed bone of contention removed from what has been and will yet be a happy and united Republic. 

For the Polynesian, a paper owned by the Hawaiian Government, to be thus lending its aid and comfort to the rebels, is, to say tyne least, base, unmanly and cowardly, and betrays in its organ malice prepense. Although it can have but little weight beyond the circle of its 147 1/2 subscribers, yet we must condemn it, for the animus exhibited. It is just as if, in any rebellion that might arise in this kingdom, California journals should misrepresent the existing government and inflame discontented persons to embark in expeditions against it, shouting with all their voice, that the rebels though "fighting on their knees have kept a government at bay," that they "have amply vindicated the birthright of freemen, and their title to be called Hawaiians." We can easily conceive of the bitter animosity of the editor of the Polynesian towards the free American Union, but we cannot conceive how this government can honorably tolerate such conduct in its agent and organ.