New York (NY) Evening Post, "Limited Liability in War," February 25, 1864

     LIMITED LIABILITY IN WAR.

   Lord Stanley is reported to have said a clever thing recently, in regard to the speck of war in Europe; he remarked that England was, no doubt, morally responsible to Denmark for a certain amount of physical as well as moral aid, but that what Europe wants is some system of war with limited liability.

   Lord Stanley's notion of limited liability in war would suit Jeff. Davis admirably; indeed, his friends in the North have persistently attempted to apply it, by insisting that slavery, the system to aggrandize which the slaveholders went to war against the Union, should not suffer by the war. But the rebels have already discovered that he who dances must pay the piper; and that the kind of limited liability which would enable them to carry on a savage war against the Union, at the expense of the Union, and without injury to themselves, is too absurd and nonsensical to gain favor with the American people.

   Those who plead the cause of slavery in this country, after all the suffering it has brought upon us, remind us of the absurd verdict rendered by a French jury in a murder case, some years ago. An innkeeper and his wife were tried for having murdered a traveller while lodging in their house, and further, for having made part of the dead body into sausages, with which they duly regaled succeeding customers. These singularly revolting accusations were clearly proved, and the jury returned a verdict of "guilty, but without premeditation, and under extenuating circumstances."

   Just so the Seymours, Woods, Vallandingham and the pro-slavery faction try to urge that the murders which slavery has committed ought to be pardoned, and that the "peculiar institution" ought to be declared "guilty, but with extenuating circumstances." Happily, these persons are not the jury who are to make up the verdict. They are only the tricksters who are trying their best to get a culprit clear of justice.

   It will not be long before the only defenders of slavery in the whole Union will be found in a few obscure journals and disappointed politicians in the free states. Already the most radical opposition to slavery comes from these slave states which have been redeemed from the rule of the rebellious slaveholders. By the Memphis Convention which met yesterday, for instance, it is declared that "Emancipation, immediate and unconditional, is our best and only true policy." In the slave states the determination of loyal men is to have done with slavery; to root it up and destroy it utterly.

   We have just at this time a curious example before us of the southern and northern sentiment on this topic. The New York Daily News, in expressing its "regret" at what it calls the "abolition speech" of Mr. James Brooks in the House of Representatives the other day, remarks:

   "When slavery is dead the South ceases to exist except as conquered provinces. When slavery dies, except in the only manner it can die, by the voice of the citizens of the slave states repealing their laws and changing their constitutions, then are the states mere tributaries to the general government, which by its assumption of power becomes a consolidated empire. When it is dead by act of Congress, the Constitution of the United States dies with it, for it allows no such usurpation of power––no such a blow at the rights of the states, and can survive no such fatal stab."

   Now compare this with the following from the Nashville Union, the most popular as well as the ablest journal in Tennessee. Replying to just such an assertion as that which we have quoted from the Daily News, the Union says: 

    "Now there would be some reason in bringing forward this if it could be established that slavery is the government; or that it is a part of the government of some of the states. Let us inquire into these propositions. Is slavery the government of any state? If it is, then it is clearly the duty of the United States, as declared in the constitution, to abolish it immediately. The idea of having slavery for the government of any state is monstrous, and cannot be tolerated; the system in that case could no more be tolerated by the federal constitution than an order of English mobility, or an Austrian despotism. 

   "But slavery is not only the government of any state, but it is not even the part of any state government, unless we except that of South Carolina, where a voter is required to own ten slaves. If every state in the United States were to die of the plague to-day, the governments of the slave states would be [illegible] and unbroken. They would have all the powers which they ever possessed. Their machinery of executive, legislative and judicial officers would be wholly unimpaired. The universal mortality of the slave population would have as little influence upon the integrity and powers of the state governments as the hog cholera or the murrain would have. Pennsylvania abolished slavery within her limits, and continued a state as fully as before the abolition. If every slave in Tennessee were to run to Africa, the state government would be the same as before the stampede. • • • Slavery is a political parasite, a fungus, which has no necessary connection with the government of any state; it may be killed, or die of decay, and the government be ever more vigorous than ever.": 

   If the Woods, Vallandingham, Seymour and other pro-slavery politicians are counting on the "southern vote" to help them in the next election, they will be as much disappointed as their friends, the mutinous slaveholders, have been in the result of their conspiracy against the Union.