Valley Spirit
Seven Years of Radicalism
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It was just seven years yesterday since Abraham Lincoln was elected President of the United States. Although a Western man himself, with a possible inclination to conservatism, his accession to the Presidential chair put the government completely under the control of the fanatical Radicals of New England. These authors of the Kansas troubles and patrons of the John Brown raid into Virginia had made up their mind to revolutionize the government, and in Abraham Lincoln they found an instrument adapted to their purpose. As first as his dull intellect was able to comprehend their designs, he fell in with them and used all his official power to crush the Constitution, under whose forms he had been elevated to the Chief Magistracy, against the will of a large majority of the people. War came because the Radicals wanted it, and lasted four years because the Radicals were unwilling to end it in two. It required time , even under the demoralizing influences of a gigantic civil war, to bring the people to look with complacency upon the destruction of a government which they had so long been accustomed to regard as "the best ever devised by the wisdom of man." New England ideas prevailed at last, and at the end of these eventful seven years we find ourselves with a dissevered Union, a subverted Constitution, and an altered form of government.
This is what seven years of Radicalism have ended in, but this is not all that Radicalism has cost us. We have paid out over four thousand million dollars in money, at least one-half of which went as stealing to shouting "patriots." We have sacrificed hundreds of thousands of lives, dotted the country over with mutilated human beings, and with helpless widows and children. Property to an immense extent has been destroyed, and the productive industry of the country has sustained injuries which fifty ears cannot repair. From a lightly taxed people we have become the heaviest taxed in the world. All that we eat and all that we wear--all that we produce and all that we consume--is taxed. From the swaddling clothes of the new-born babe down to the last nail in the coffin's lid everything is taxed to pay the cost of these seven years of Radicalism. The picture of the last seven years is dark, but a gleam of sunshine has been thrown upon us at last. This fall's elections show that the public mind is awakening to the enormities of Radical misrule. Honest, fair-minded and well-disposed Republicans are beginning to see through the schemes of the New England revolutionists. The candid admission of Thaddeus Stevens that the Rump Congress has been acting outside of the Constitution, and that he and his associates want no reunion that does not bring negro equality with it, has given them a new view of public affairs. Their eyes will be still further opened during the approaching session of Congress, and thee is reason to hope that the elections of next year will seal the doom of Radicalism and rescue our government from the evil control of the malignant fanatics of New England.
Money
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Money is so abundant in England, according to the London Star, that it goes begging for borrowers at 1 and 1 1/2 per cent. interest, per annum! Its superabundance has an unfavorable effect on trade. People who live on the interest of their money are compelled to economize to an extent never before heard of, because, at the reduced rate of interest, their income is cut down almost to nothing.
In the United States, on the other hand, notwithstanding the amount of paper issued by the government and the National Banks, there is a great complaint of scarcity of money, and the prevailing rates of interest are from 6 to 10 per cent., with many transactions at even higher figures.
The plethora of cash capital in England and the scarcity of it in this country are owing in a great measure to the reconstruction policy of the Radicals. The war cut off shipments of cotton to England, our best customer, and we were obliged to send our gold and silver there in payment of our purchases. The drain has gone on without interruption for seven years, and we have not yet reached the end of it. If the Radicals had promptly restored the Union after the surrender of Lee and Johnston, and allowed the Southern people to sit down again quietly under their own vine and fig tree, with none to molest them, we should ere this have drawn four or five hundred million dollars of English capital here to buy our cotton. This transfer would have relieved the English money market of its superabundance of cash and kept the rate of interest up to it usual point. It would also have averted the stringency in the money market of this country, and prevented the rate of interest here from rising to the ruinous height of 10 and 12 percent.
Thus the Radical policy is working injury to business, both at home and abroad. The only persons benefited by it are plundering officers of the Freedmen's bureau and low politicians like Brownlow and Hunnicutt
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