n 21 Men of Ohio! You know what this Western army has suffered. You know not now the hardships and sufferings of your soldiers in their chill tents, their shelterless bivouacs, their long, yeary marches, and their battle-thinned ranks. If there be honesty and.purity in human motives,-it must be found among your long enduring soldiers. Hear us, and for your country’s sake, if not for our’s, stop your wild, shameless, political strifes, unite .for the common cause, and never think or speak of peace and coinpromise until the now empty terms mean : The Republic as it was, peacefully if it may be, but forcibly at all events. It is said, war and force cannot restore the Union! What can? Is there anything else that has been left untried, short of national dishonor and shame? Nothing. Purely physical power has been invoked to destroy the Government, and physical force must meet it. Conquer the rebellious armies, shut in by blockades and victorious armies the deluded people of the rebelling States, and let no j>eace, no happiness, no prosperity dwell in their land or homes, until they rise against their own tyrants, until popular opinion with them overthrows their false Government and dooms their despotic leaders. Whip them and confine them, until “Acteon is devoured by his own dogs.” This is all that can be done, and it must be done with the determined energy of a united people. Thus feel and think the soldiers of the grand army of the United States. Are you with us, or will you now desert us, sell your national birthright for a mess of pottage, and for success in local politics barter away your country, crawl at the feet and lick the hands of the perfidious, cruel and devlish conspirators who have organized this rebellion, and who boast of their success in destroying your Government, slaying your sons and wasting your treasure, contemned, derided and despised by them, while you are humbly craving their favor? Not waiting or even hoping for returning loyalty in them, or for terms of peace to be tendered by them? Can you thus dishonor yourselves, your soldiers and your State! We ask you now to stay, support and uphold the hands of your soldiers. Give some of the wasted sympathy, so illy but freely bestowed upon the old political hacks and demagogues, who seek a blessed martyrdom in Lincoln Bastiles, to the suffering but bravely enduring soldiers who in the camp, the field and the hospital, bear real hardships uncomplaingly. If treason must run riot in the North, keep it there—insult not your soldiers by sending to them the vile emanations of the traitors who are riding into office, place and power, over the ruins of the Government, and making them their stepping- stones. Insult us not by letters, speeches and papers, which tell us that we are engaged as hirelings in an unholy Abolition war, which make mob idols of the hour of those whose hypocritical demagoguery takes shape in cowardly, covert treason—whose constant vocation is denunciation of their Government and its armed defenders. The Army of the West is in terrible earnest—earnest to conquer and destroy armed rebels—earnest to meet force with force—earnest in its hearty detestation of cowardly traitors at home—earnest in will and power to overcome all who desire the nation’s ruin. Ohio’s 100,000 soldiers in the field, citizens at home, potent in either capacity, ask their fathers, brethren and friends, by their firesides and in their peaceful homes, to hear and heed this appeal, and to put an end to covert treason at home, more dangerous now to our national existence than the presence of the armed hosts of misguided rebels in the field. On the hearing and adoption of this address by the First brigade, Third division, Fourteenth army corps, Ooi. Walker also reported the following resolution, which was unanimously adopted. Therefore, “Resolved, For ourselves we are resolved to maintain the honor and integrity of our Government; from the St. Lawrence to the Gulf, and between the oceans, there shall be but one supreme political power. We are able to defend ourbirthright; the blood of our sires is not contaminated in our veins; we are neither to be insulted nor robbed with impunity ; the Government we defend was formed for noble purposes ; we are the executors of a living, a dying testament, written in the blood of our fathers, which we will rewrite in our own • to preserve our Government is to us a law, unalterable in our hearts as the decrees of Heaven; we stop not now to point the finger of scorn at petty traitors who vainly seek to immortalize themselves by acts of treason—too cowardly to sin with an uplifted hand, too dastardly to stake life for life, as more
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