Polynesian Editorial: Saturday, June 1, 1861

Source: The Polynesian. Honolulu: Saturday, June 1, 1861

The news from the United States and Europe, which we publish to-day, is of the most ominous and important nature. That civil war should be a fact where civil liberty is a principle of action, is one of those sad and fearful animal which the human mind is now and then called upon to reconcile as best it may. We do not see that the principle of government is changed to-day from what it was yesterday, either North or South, yet brother rises against brother, the cry of blood is upon every lip, and to slay or be slain is the watchword of the hour. Where is "the sober, second thought of the people," the armed omnipotence of justice and right, the truth elicited by free discussion, which were the glorious characteristics of that free, self-governing people? Is it too late at this hour and after eight months of the most thorough discussion on both sides of "the approaching crisis," its consequences and its remedies, to say that the people are led by professional, interested and unscrupulous politicians. The recruiting stations attest the popular sentiment in either section as plainly and as truly as ever did the electoral urn.

As one stands upon the theoretical platform of constitutional right, the other side stands upon the practical platform of revolutionary right, and the constitutional bridge of amendment is broken by the precipitancy of the one and the unwillingness of the other to read the Constitution as it was read in the earlier days when the Southerner dwelt unmolested in the north, and the Northerner meddled not with the institutions and usages of the South. But, to whatever cause, to however remote a period the present difficulties in the United States may be traced, the present disruption of the political ligatures is a solemn, serious, unquestionable fact which we fear no violent measures will ever allay or heal. In the contest now begun we do not doubt for a moment the superiority of the North in men and material, but, granted that they succeed, how will they make the South, if the South is true to itself, reenter the Union unless by garrisoning their towns and overawing the people by military demonstrations and dragonades; and when the spirit of the South shall be broken, and it submits to the yoke, which it says has galled its neck for thirty years, what then becomes of the principle of liberty, which both parties invoke; in what will the South be better off than the Hungarians, the Venetians, the Poles, or other conquered nationalities, who are forced to accept a government not of its own making, and a government with interests and sympathies opposed to its own? The good book tells us not to answer a fool according to his folly, and when wisdom counseled other means, it is a sad and sorrowful comment on the spirit and civilization of the age, that in the United States, of all countries on the globe, civl disputes should have been referred to the arbitrament of the sword-an argument which even the autocrat of all the Russias is unwilling to employ against the insurgent Poles.