September 9, 1863, The Missouri Republican,
“Spirit of the German Press”

In another place the Neue Zeit says:

In spite of General Schofield, the Paola military rendezvous takes place to-day, September 8, on the Kansas border. Our lamb-hearted general has promised to be present, in order to pacify Lane and Jennison, and to prevent an invasion of Missouri. He has even already assured Governor Hall that no such invasion shall take place. But we must have a very poor knowledge of these Kansas people if they bow to his will, unless he has proved to them by the punishment of Quantrill and his people that be has the intention as well as the power to restore quiet and security in Missouri. Missouri must even demand, in the interest of her own honor, that Quantrill be found in some way or another, and tied up to the first tree. As long as this is not done, Schofield ought certainly not to say anything, since he appears until then as the most incapable of all incapables, if not even as an accomplice.

There seems to be only one opinion amongst the German radical papers in regard to the Springfield convention, and that is one of extreme dissatisfaction. The Illinois Staats Zeitung literally denounces Senator Trumbull and the other politicians who took active part in that meeting to defeat the resolutions of sympathy with the Missouri radicals, while the Quincy Tribune goes as far as to say:

Our readers can convince themselves by the report of the meeting that the whole maneuver was only intended to be a puff for President Lincoln, or rather to have him credit the leaders of that meeting with this puff gotten up for his benefit. This seems also to have been the reason why the Germans passed separate resolutions, which contained a kind of protest, though a very lame and invalid one, against the resolutions of the main meeting, but which are otherwise also empty. The party represented at Springfield will not save the country, and it may soon be asked whether the radicals have no sufficient provocation to justify a closer alliance with the Copperheads, and thus at least to shake off all responsibility for a support of this hopeless administration.

A long communication in the Westliche Post is equally bitter in denouncing that convention and its resolutions. The writer ridicules the statement of the Springfield correspondent of the Missouri Democrat, that Illinois, first in war, is also first in diplomacy; compares the proceedings of the Springfield with those of the Jefferson City convention, and draws the conclusion that the former are exceedingly lame, and that the whole meeting was called together for no other purpose than to nominate Mr. Lincoln in his own home for the next Presidency. The article concludes thus:

Let the Messrs. diplomats of Illinois know once for all that Missouri has no desire whatever to try Mr. Lincoln again. He has disgracefully deserted his friends in Missouri; he exercises his whole influence to overthrow their healthy policy; he protects rebels and persecutes Union men because they are radical; he gives the usurper Gamble unheard-of despotic power, and drives away his own friends in order to make room for pro-slavery men; he insults the only true Union men and coquets with thorough secessionists; hence he need not be astonished if his former friends desert him also. With the consent of Missouri, Mr. Lincoln cannot again mount the Presidential chair. That other diplomats, like the prophetic Seward, or the many sided Blairs, have to expect still less from Missouri, it is unnecessary to mention. The Pathfinder has first opened the road of emancipation on the 31st of August, 1861; he has indicated the way in which to restore a Union of free States on the 4th of March, 1865.

The Post also has the following:

KANSAS AND SCHOFIELD.

General Schofield telegraphs to Governor Hall that no invasion of the Kansas people need be feared, and yet he has issued an order calling on the militia of both States to remain in their respective borders. Why, then, does General Schofield not telegraph or proclaim at the same time that he has inaugurated preparations to make for the future all such disgraceful invasions as that of Quantrill into Kansas an impossibility, and that he will exert all his energies to punish the persons concerned in this outrage and the secessionists of the border counties in such a manner for all time to come that they will never again think of new invasions? Does Mr. Schofield believe that he can keep the Kansas Unionists by his order from exercising the right of self-defense?

What has Kansas not had to suffer from these border counties? All the sorrows she has experienced, all the battles which she has had to fight for her existence as a free State, down to the Sicilian Vespers of Lawrence, are essentially to be ascribed to the slaveholders' aristocracy of those border counties. The inhabitants of that district are, in their overwhelming majority, men who share completely the views of Jeff. Davis and the worst secessionists in South Carolina and Mississippi. This Mr. Schofield as an old Missourian could not be ignorant of, and hence it was his duty to have a sharp lookout kept on these counties, and to place them under the command of a careful, energetic general. To his neglect to do so the Lawrence affair must be particularly attributed. Nevertheless, Mr. Schofield permits the incapable Ewing to remain in office, and we hear of no other measure which he himself has resolved upon to punish the criminals except an order from Ewing banishing a number of families from the State--a measure the expediency of which is very problematical. But Mr. Schofield is, on the other hand, very much afraid that the terrible Lane may invade the border counties, and give the secessionists there a lesson which they may not so easily forget. If Mr. Schofield, however, adopts no measures which will guarantee security to the Union men of Kansas and Missouri, how can he expect that these men will respect his orders and not procure such guarantees themselves?

Mr. Schofield has no moral right to prohibit this, unless he himself gives the secesh rabble this necessary lesson; unless he disarms them, imprisons the most influential, and hangs every one who has been concerned in the invasion. As long as he does not do this, he has no right to issue such prohibitions, which, under these circumstances, appear simply as a satire on the right of self-defense.

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