Staunton Vindicator

Brownlow was among the first to raise the cry of another war and, in terms as execrable as ever, emanated from his demoniac brain, to call for the extermination of the Southern people. Forney, the "Dead Duck," takes up the cry, and says that the next army that marches South "will go there to stay," not only "to revenge but to exterminate." Brownlow and Forney both know that the Southern people are as brave as any people under the sun, and have acted as honorably in defeat as they were daring in the contest; that they have done all that has been asked of them to show that they have accepted the result of the late war and intend to abide by it in good faith. Yet these fiends in human shape, for the purpose of keeping alive a sectional hostility, for a reason which can not be concealed, and to arouse again the passions of the North against the South, speak of the threatened contest as "between the South and North." That man must singular indeed that does not fear a collision, under certain circumstances, but not "between the South and North."--We are but a silent speculators of the passing events in this country, with no voice in its affairs, calmly awaiting the time when reason and justice shall accord us rights and privileges now unjustly denied, with no power to enforce them, much less to wage another war against the undamaged North.--Without the desire even to engage in another struggle we are charged with it and are threatened in consequences with a bloody extermination. The collision, if it comes, must be between the men of the North who are striving to restore the Constitution and the Union in good faith and those fanatics, who, to glut a vengeance still unsatisfied, would override the Constitution, and destroy forever all hopes of a Union by again saturating the land with blood.

We have great faith in the men of the North who have, through the trials of the past, continued to cry aloud for the preservation of the Constitution intact and who, together with those men who were carried away by the excitement of war and forgot for a time the existence of that instrument are now banding together with Andrew Johnson to preserve it and the Union, and believe if proper exertions are made by them in the Middle and Western States the fell fiend of war will be turned from our shores. However, if fanaticism receives the sanction of these States in the forthcoming elections the collision is likely, but between Conservatism and Radicalism and not between any two sections of the country. We of the South have no desire even to see a conflict of arms between the Conservatives and the Radicals, and certainly not to bring about one between ourselves and any other section. But silent in our sorrows and unrepresented in our interests we can afford to smile at such malicious efforts as Forney and Brownlow are making to excite Northern passions against us, and need fear but little from such blatant blusterers, knowing well that, if left with them, and those their ilk, they will never attempt to put into execution their extermination programme.