New York Tribune, April 4, 1871, page 4:

A CASE FOR THE EXERCISE OF PATIENCE.

T o  t h e  E d i t o r  o f  T h e  T r i b u n e .

   Sir:  You have repeatedly said that, if a majority of all the people in the Rebel States had really wished to secede from the Union, and had asked for a separation in a friendly, respectful, and proper manner, we should have had no moral right to refuse.  But making the demand by seizing our forts, taking forcible possession of all the Government property within their reach, and behaving in the bullying manner they did, it was our duty to resist a demand so insolently and so improperly made, with all the force we could bring against them. You have also said that, if a majority of the Canadians wished a separation from Great Britain, and asked for it in a friendly, respectful, and proper manner, it ought not to be denied them.  But if they demanded a separation in the bullying and plundering way that the South insisted on seceding from our Union, it would be the duty of the British “to give them a spanking.”  Now, if moral and political rights, which a people are justly and fairly entitled to, must be asked for in a friendly, respectful, and proper manner, before they ought to be granted, is it reasonable that we must be forced by deeds of blood and murder, committed upon our friends by our enemies, into restoring rights and franchises that have been justly forfeited by the treason, rebellion, and crime of those still unrepenting and deadly enemies?

   The Tribune says that the Southern ex-Rebels have murdered five or ten thousand of our innocent friends since the Rebellion was crushed, and not one of the murderers has been punished for his crime.  Is it reasonable that we should grant full amnesty to these daring villains, take them back to citizenship with all this guilt and blood upon them, and restore all the rights and franchises they have forfeited by their crimes, lest they should murder many thousands more of our unoffending fellow-citizens, because a Republican Government is too weak, too cowardly, or too corrupt, to protect its people and punish criminals?  There may have been many believers in such a doctrine at Algiers, and along the coast of Barbary, a hundred years ago; it may be believed in by Greek brigands and the American Democracy now; but I hope such is not the sentiment of the loyal and intelligent Americans of the present day.  Pass a full Amnesty bill, and the cowardly assassin Yerger, who murdered a meritorious United States officer on the public street at noonday, may come to Washington as a Member of Congress, and thank Chief Justice Chase, President Grant, and the politicians, for his escape from the gallows he most justly merited.  The Emperor of Russia willingly and peaceably freed five times as many slaves as war compelled us to emancipate, and forced their former owners to sell them land on long credit at fair price, that they might have their own homesteads, and he protects them from wrong.  American Democracy, now it thinks the danger over, is willing to see all our Freedmen reenslaved or exterminated.  Such is the difference beween Russian despotism and American Democracy.

Reading, Pa., March 23, 1871.      Thomas Jackson.

Comments by The Tribune.

   Our correspondent labors under evident confusion of mind with regard to the facts which he would state if he clearly understood them.  Let us briefly but kindly rescue them from his misconceptions:

   I.  We have no other doctrine respecting Secession than that embodied in the preamble to our fathers’ Declaration of Independence: namely, that “governments derive their just “powers from the consent of the governed;” which consent the governed have the right to withdraw.  Our fathers held themselves justified in seceding from and dividing the British empire on this ground, renouncing their allegiance to the Crown whereof they had been born subjects, and whereto they had sworn fidelity.  Having been educated to believe them right in their revolt, we shall not willingly defile their graves at this late day.

   II.  We entirely agree with our correspondent that the Ku-Klux outrages at the South afford no reason whatever – none in the world – for Universal Amnesty.  On the contrary, they present a very formidable obstacle to the granting of such Amnesty.  We were for Amnesty long before they were heard of, and shall be to the end – not because of those outrages, but in spite of them.  But we agree also with both Senators from South Carolina and a majority of the Republicans in Congress from the South, that the persistent exclusion from office of the most eminent Southerners, because of their part in the Rebellion, has a mischievous, disturbing, irritating tendency, and that a General Amnesty for offenses now more that five years bygone would deprive the Ku-Klux of a most potent means of fomenting disaffection and inciting outrage.  The existing proscription, while it does no good, is made the pretext and excuse for a great deal of harm.

   III.  It does seem to us that all men must see that this proscription is ruinous to the Republicans.  It lost us Virginia in 1869, West Virginia in 1870, and afforded the pretext for the bolt that took Missouri away from us last November.  Her people then voted directly for and against its perpetuation, and gave majorities of eight or ten to one against its continuance.  Why should not this vote of three-fourths of the Republicans (to say nothing of the Democrats) of Missouri for General Amnesty be entitled to some consideration?

   IV.  We have favored no Amnesty whatever for crimes committed since the surrender and parole of the Rebel armies.  No one has proposed any.  When, therefore, Mr. Jackson asserts that Amnesty would in any way profit the murderer of Col. Crane “on the public street “at noonday,” he simply betrays his lamentable ignorance of the matter he discusses.  We regard it as a great public misfortune that the perpetrators of such crimes during peace are enabled to confound their homicides with those committed in the prosecution of Civil War.

   V.  Mr. Jackson ought to know that his notions have always been current “at Algiers “and along the coast of Barbary.”  All rude and cruel tribes have gloried in them.  Our ideas are relatively modern, and are confined to people at least as civilized as himself.

 – We close with a general proposition:  If we are ever to see the violence and outrage now rife at the South repressed and punished, we must overlook and grant oblivion to the offenses committed in a civil war which ceased nearly six years ago.  [Ed.