Source: The Polynesian. Honolulu: Saturday, March 21, 1863.
We have been permitted to copy the following paragraphs from a letter recently received by a gentleman in these islands from a relative in the Eastern States. The writer is one on whose head the snows of sixty winters have descended, -a native of the "Old Bay State," and a strict believer the faith as expounded y the Puritans. His views are interesting, as indicating tyne silent current which underlies public sentiment in the Northern States, and which may yet do much towards bringing about peace between the belligerent sections.
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"Of our unhappy country it is humiliating to speak. The boasted Republic-is shattered and silvering in civil war, there fruit of fanaticism and sectional pride. And the most melancholy feature of it is the bitterness and malice and murderous spirit exhibited by the professed disciples of Christ. The Ministers and Churches generally manifest a fanatical and deluded zeal in this war which is strangely inconsistent with the spirit and teachings of the Gospel. If it was a question of a government or no government in the whole country, or between good order and anarchy, then good men might contend; but it is simply a question of whether twenty-three States shall force a government upon the remaining eleven which they have rejected and despised, having adopted another more suited to their views and interests. And shall two-thirds of the people in a contest for empire sand dominion over the other third invoke the aid and influence of the Gospel of Christ? This is the real question and disguise it as they may with the high sounding words of "love of the Union," "Constitution," etc., it means, subduing the Southern States by military power to our dominion. If anything can be found in the Gospel of Christ to sanction this, I have much mistaken its teachings and spirit.
"Aside from the religious aspects of the question, the consideration that the Union was formed by the free voluntary action of independent States, and could not have existed without that voluntary action, and that the Union was formed neither to extend nor abolish slavery, renders a war under the Constitution and in the Union to abolish slavery a very absurd and unconstitutional war. I do not, and can not, justify the South from the beginning, for they separated fro their truest constitutional friends, the Northern Democrats, and by that division they gave success to the Republicans in the Presidential election. Even then the Republicans would have been in a minority in Congress had the Southern members remained. But South Carolina hastily and rashly separated from the Union, thus leading the way for several States to follow her before the inauguration of the Republican President. During the winter, efforts were made by Union men, North and South, to obtain some pledge or guarantee from the Republicans that would assure the South of the safety of their Constitutional and States rights in the Union, and which doubtless would have retained them all except South Carolina; but all concession and compromise was refused by that party, then exulting and arrogant in their success. When South Carolina first talked of or threatened to secede from the Union, the response from the Republicans was- "they dare not, and if they attempt it we will crush out the rebellion and hang the traitors." South Carolina went on and declared herself out of the Union, and then from the North came sneers at her weakness and poverty, with threats of subjugation and punishment for her treason. Whether South Carolina's course in preparing for defense and resistance was morally right or wrong in her, it was most natural under the circumstances. Even then, war might and should have been avoided by negotiation, conciliation and compromise, instead of using threats and abuse, or by leaving the South to themselves and their own chosen government. President Buchanan avoided it while he could, and posterity will do him justice, but Lincoln and his party meant from the beginning, and the attack on Fort Sumter by the South was under the circumstances a military necessity, as they had assumed their independence of the Government of the United States.
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"Eleven States, with 12,000,000 inhabitants were united in a Southern Confederacy, determined in resistance to any coercion from the North, and resolute for independence. It was folly and madness to attempt forcing these States into a Union they had renounced, and submission to a Government they despised. Better to have them let alone, or recognized their independence, and made a treaty of trade and intercourse with them on the best of terms for both sections, thus treating them as equals and brethren, though in error it may be, and in time we might have won them back to union with us. But now, this bloody strife precludes the hope of any real union, and the results of the war, so far, are anything but satisfactory to the North. The loss of property, the enormous expense, loss of life, of health, and the general degeneracy in morals and character, connate be estimated, nor repaid by any military success on the part of the North. For success will only bring death and desolation, and the subjugation of a ruined and embittered people who survive such an event. May it teach us and generations to come, the folly of our self-conceit, and the wickedness of our arrogance as a people, as well as the impolicy, unconstitutionality, and injustice of interfering with slavery as politicians and religionists, when it does not exist among us. What, and when tyne end will be to this strife, none can foresee, as there is danger of our being involved in war with some European nations, though our madness and folly at home. May God have mercy upon us and save us."
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