Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture;
TekstThe Central Democratic Committee for East Tennessee, in a call for a District Convention at Clinton, in May last, through the Knoxville Standard, conclude said call in this language:
"The time has again arrived when the national Democracy must rally to their country's call and preserve the Constitution as it is in its purity, and perpetuate the union of the States from the rain which the Black Republican Party of the North, aided by THEIR KNOW-NOTHING ALLIES OF THE SOUTH, would bring upon them. By order of the
"CENTRAL COMMITTEE."
The Sag-Nicht Convention held at Somerville, on Thursday the 8th of May, and which selected D. M. Currin as their Electoral candidate, adopted the following resolution:
"Resolved, That we have been appointed by the Democracy of this Electoral District to organize to fight, in the coming Presidential election, the Black Republicans and Know-Nothings. Resolved, That we can beat them, and we will do it. Resolved, That we will cordially receive the co-operation of all Old-Line Whigs who will assist us in carrying out these resolutions."
Now, the charge is here made that the Know-Nothings of the South are the allies of the Black Republicans of the North. This is the impression intended to be made, first by these concealed calumniators at Knoxville, and afterwards by the open and avowed slanderers of the same party at Somerville! With such wholesale lying as is displayed in both of these cases, we have but little patience: we only give their language, to show their recklessness in making such an issue. And although this Foreign party claim to be the guardians of Southern interests, we propose to show, before we conclude this chapter, that they are themselves the "allies of the Black Republicans of the North," and are giving them more "aid and comfort" than all the other parties in the country!
FRANCIS P. BLAIR, former editor of Gen. Jackson's organ at Washington, was the President of the Black Republican Convention at Pittsburg, in February last! John M. Niles; Democratic Senator in Congress, was President of the Black Republican Convention held in Connecticut! In the Pittsburg Convention, over which Blair presided, PRESTON KING, ABIJAH MANN, DAVID WILMOT, and JACOB BRINKERHOFF, Old-Line Democrats, figured conspicuously.
For two long and cold winter months, the Democrats, both North and South, voted for Richardson, of Illinois, for Speaker, a violent anti-slavery man, whose speeches against slavery, and in favor of Abolitionism, were matters of record in the Congressional Globe, and were delivered on the floor of Congress so late as 1850! The immortal 75 Democrats did not cease to vote for this man Richardson, until Gen. Zollicoffer, of Tennessee, read his speeches upon him, in the presence of his friends!
On the 2d of February, SAMUEL A. SMITH, of Tennessee, a Democratic Representative in Congress, renewed his motion to adopt the plurality rule. His proposition, which it was evident would elect Banks, was carried by Black Republican votes, who went for it in a body. This would still not have elected Banks, but for the fact that the following Democrats voted for the odious plurality rule: Clingman, Herbert, Hickman, Jewett, Kelley, Barclay, Bayard, Wells, Williams, and Samuel A. Smith! Mr. Clarke was the only American who voted for the odious rule!
Mr. Carlile, a national American, of Virginia, before the vote was taken upon this plurality rule, offered the following substitute for it:
"Resolved, That the Hon. Wm. Aiken, a Representative from the State of South Carolina, be, and he is hereby declared Speaker of the Thirty-Fourth Congress."
Gov. Aiken is a sound Southern Democrat – never was any thing else – but Col. Smith objected, and demanded the previous question, which cut off Mr. Carlile's resolution, and which was to prevent its adoption! The candidate of the Democratic party, at that time, Mr. Orr, immediately withdrew in favor of Gov. Aiken, upon the introduction of Mr. Carlile's resolution; and to prevent Aiken's election, SAMUEL A. SMITH cut off said resolution by a call of the previous question!
Banks was elected by one vote, and this could not be accomplished until SEVEN DEMOCRATS got behind the bar, and refused to vote at all! These were HICKMAN, PARKER, and BARCLAY, of Pennsylvania; CRAIG, of North Carolina; TAYLOR, of Louisiana; RICHARDSON, of Illinois; and SEWARD, of Georgia! Any two of these Southern Democrats could have made Aiken Speaker, but they did not want him – they knew Banks to be a Democrat, if he were a Black Republican – and to elect him, they believed would give them the strength of that odious party in the coming contest.
We have before us the Washington Union of Sept. 27th, 1853, giving, editorially, a glowing account of the Massachusetts Democratic State Convention, reporting the speech of Nathaniel P. Banks, of Waltham, concluding that report in these words:
"Mr. Banks emphatically and decidedly, on his own part, and on that of the Democrats of Massachusetts, disclaimed the truth of the rumors in certain newspapers that an arrangement had been entered into with another political party in the Commonwealth concerning the distribution of State offices. It was his and this Convention's and all true Democrats' desire, belief, and determination, that Henry W. Bishop should be elected governor of Massachusetts, and that the other Democratic State officers should also be elected. He was not afraid of defeat, and less afraid of Whig success, which, to judge by its recent effects, was simply equivalent to a defeat. [Applause.]"
It may be said, and doubtless will be, that Banks has allied himself with the Republicans. But Banks says he has always been a Democrat, and that he was nominated as a Democrat in his district. And certain it is, that he was elected Speaker by DEMOCRATS, under the compulsion of an odious plurality rule, and the gag of the previous question!
It will be said, and said truthfully too, that SIX AMERICANS FROM THE NORTH voted for Mr. Fuller, of Pennsylvania. So they did; and in doing so, they voted for a sound national and conservative man. But did this justify Southern Democrats in dodging the question, and thereby electing a Black Republican Speaker? Gov. Aiken was the candidate of the seven Democrats – he was not the candidate of the six Americans! Democracy, moreover, had refused to vote for an American under any circumstances, and had, on the first day of the meeting of Congress, passed a resolution insulting the whole American party, in caucus! We would have seen them banished to the farthest verge of astronomical imagination, before we would have voted for any man that favored that insulting resolution!
In 1847, by a unanimous vote, both branches of the Legislature of New Hampshire adopted resolutions denunciatory of the institution of slavery, and approving of the Wilmot Proviso. These resolutions were reported to the House, by the Representative from Hillsboro, the native town of Gen. Pierce, and were in the handwriting of Pierce!
On the 2d of October, 1847, the Democratic Soft-Shells, who are now the supporters of Pierce's administration, and fill the offices he has to dispose of in New York, held a State Convention, and declared their "uncompromising hostility to slavery" in a string of resolutions they adopted and ordered to be published.
On the 16th of February, 1848, a Democratic State Convention for New York convened at Utica, to appoint Delegates to the National Convention to nominate candidates for President and Vice President, at which a string of anti-Southern resolutions were adopted, denouncing "slavery or involuntary servitude," as repugnant to the genius of Republicanism.
On the 18th of July, 1848, the Democratic Soft-Shells held a mass-meeting in the park of New York, and, by way of making perfect their organization against General Cass, declared, by resolutions, their "uncompromising hostility to slavery or involuntary servitude!"
On the 13th of September, 1848, a Democratic mass-meeting convened at Buffalo, in New York, and, in a general Abolition jubilee, adopted resolutions condemning and denouncing the institution of slavery!
In 1852, while the contest was going on between Pierce and Scott, the Washington Union said, editorially:
"THE FREE-SOIL DEMOCRATIC LEADERS OF THE NORTH, ARE A REGULAR PORTION OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY; AND GENERAL PIERCE, IF ELECTED, WILL MAKE NO DISTINCTION BETWEEN THEM AND THE REST OF THE DEMOCRACY IN THE DISTRIBUTION OF OFFICIAL PATRONAGE, AND IN THE SELECTION OF AGENTS FOR ADMINISTERING THE GOVERNMENT!"
The Black Republicans recently held a meeting in New York, at which Benjamin F. Butler, of "pious memory," and Van Buren Swartwout notoriety, presided! On his right hand sat, as Vice President of the meeting, Moses H. Grinnell, one of the Democratic "pipe-layers" of 1840, whom this Van Buren Attorney-General Butler made efforts to send to the State prison! Another Vice President, gravely looking on, and arranged in dignified grandeur upon the stand, was John W. Edmonds, ex-"blanket contractor" in a large swindle, and a practical spiritual-rapper! A third and last Vice President was the notorious Dr. Townsend, the sarsaparilla man, who has not yet wound up his controversy with a man of the same name, as to who is the greatest rascal in the way of manufacturing this medicine!
Among the other officers, secretaries, and prominent men in the meeting, was C. A. Dana, of the Tribune office, a Fourierist, who, at a public meeting on a former occasion, toasted "Horace Greeley, Charles Fourier, and Jesus Christ!" Prominent in the meeting was C. A. Stetson, of the Astor House, an Amalgamationist. Henry J. Raymond, the Abolition editor of the Times, and Rudolph Garrigue, a noisy German Abolitionist, looked and acted as though they believed the salvation of the Union depended upon the success of the Republicans! A fellow who made frequent motions, an Irishman by the name of McMorrow, had served an apprenticeship of twelve months in the State prison, for breaking open a store after night! The principal speaker, who spoke for two hours on the subject of slavery, was the notorious Bingham, an itinerant Abolitionist from Ohio. It was a queer medley of men, parties, principles, and characters – two-thirds of all the active partisans in the meeting having held offices in the ranks of Democracy! And still, that party boasts of its Northern wing being sound upon the slavery question.
And here is the resolution of the 8th of January Democratic Convention in Ohio, appointing delegates to the Cincinnati Pow-wow:
"Resolved, That the people of Ohio now, as they have always done, look upon slavery as an evil, and unfavorable to the development of the spirit and practical benefits of free institutions; and that, entertaining these sentiments, they will at all times feel it to be their duty to use all power clearly given by the terms of the national compact, to prevent its increase, to mitigate, and finally eradicate the evil."
To show, just here, where Tennessee Democrats stand upon the infamous Wilmot Proviso question, we give the following extract from a recent number of the Nashville Patriot:
JAMES K. POLK,
who, in 1847, approved the Oregon bill, which contained this odious and unconstitutional clause: next in order is
CAVE JOHNSON,
now President of the Bank of Tennessee, who voted for the same bill which Mr. Polk sanctioned: next we have
AARON V. BROWN,
an aspirant before the Cincinnati Convention, who did likewise: then comes
JULIUS W. BLACKWELL,
a star whose light has been quenched in obscurity, but who voted with his colleagues for the Oregon bill in '47: next in the procession of Southern men "dangerous to the South" is
BARCLAY MARTIN,
President Pierce's U. S. Mail Agent, who cast a similar vote: following him we have
LUCIEN B. CHASE,
author of the History of the Polk Administration, at present a resident of New York city, but at the time he exhibited himself as "a dangerous man to the South," a representative in Congress from this State: he is succeeded by
FRED. P. STANTON,
for ten years a Democratic Congressman from the Memphis district: he voted for the Oregon bill, with the Wilmot Proviso annexed: behind him in the march is
ALVAN CULLOM,
a Democratic Congressman, who has squatted on the other side of one of his native mountains in the fourth district, and been quiescent for some years: he was one of the Tennessee "dangerous men: " he voted twice for the Wilmot Proviso: in the same category is
GEORGE W. JONES,
in the language of another, the "goose which cackles at the door of the Treasury vault: " notorious as a Southern supporter of the Squatter Sovereignty doctrine, with two votes on record in favor of the Wilmot Proviso. He may be reckoned as very "dangerous to the South: " last, but not least in this dread array of "dangerous men," is
ANDREW JOHNSON,
the present Governor of Tennessee, and Cincinnati aspirant: he voted three times for the Wilmot Proviso, and so doubtful are his doctrines on the slavery question, that many slaveholding members of his own party regard him as extremely "dangerous to the South."
By the way, in 1842, this same Gov. Johnson was a Senator in our State Legislature, and introduced the following Abolition resolutions, commonly called his White Basis System:
"Resolved, by the General Assembly of the State of Tennessee, That the basis to be observed in laying the State off into Congressional districts shall be the voting population, without any regard to three-fifths of the negro population.
"Resolved, That the 120,083 qualified voters shall be divided by eleven, and that each eleventh of the 120,083 of qualified voters shall be entitled to elect one member in the Congress of the United States, or so near as may be practicable without a division of counties."
The position of Gov. Johnson is this: he wishes the State entitled to her slave representation as a State, but in her own borders the representative districts are to be made according to her white population! In other words, he desires the State to retain her ten Congressmen, representing both her white and slave population, but wishes them appointed throughout the State without regard to the slave population: so that the county containing ten thousand white inhabitants, and double that number of slaves, should be entitled to no more representation than the county containing ten thousand white inhabitants and no slaves!
We heard Johnson last summer, in his debate with Gentry, in Campbell county, contend that the county of Campbell should have the same representation in Congress as the county of Shelby, which he stated had FIFTEEN THOUSAND NEGROES! He appealed to the prejudices and passions of the poor – inquired of the hard working-men of that county how they liked to see their wives and daughters offset, in enumerating the strength of the county, by the "greasy negro wenches of Shelby, Davidson, Fayette, Sumner and Rutherford counties." He made a real, stirring abolition appeal to the poor, and non-slaveholding portion of the crowd, which was in the proportion of ten to one of that county, to array them against the rich, and especially against the owners of large numbers of slaves. He told them that these Negro wenches belonged to the lordly slaveholders of Middle and West Tennessee, and that as our Constitution now is, these wenches were placed on an equality with the fair daughters and virtuous wives of laboring men. On this ground he advocated his infamous amendment to the Constitution, which would incorporate his "White Basis" scheme!
This is a rank Abolition measure, and fraught with more danger to the South than any thing proposed by the whole brood of Abolitionists, Free Soilers, and Black Republicans at the North. Already the South is weak enough, and not at all able to vote with the North in our National Legislature. The effect of this scheme is to deprive the South of one-third of her strength in Congress. Not only is this the effect, but it is the design of the mover. We hold that Johnson is a Free Soiler, and has been for years. It is stated by his Northern Democratic friends, that when he quit Congress, he came home to run for Governor – with a determination, if defeated, to remove to some of the Northwestern States, and take a new start! Had he been defeated by Maj. Henry in 1853, he would now be a Black Republican in one of the Free States, running for office! And yet the propagator of this infamous Abolition doctrine of a "White Basis" representation – this demagogue who arrays the poor against slaveholders, is the man for the ultra guardians of the slave interests of the South! A man who would not own negroes when he could, but loaned his money out at interest, and left his wife and daughters to do their own work – a man who is at heart and in his doctrines a rank Free Soiler – a man who has only remained in the South to experiment upon office-seeking! This is the man that Georgia, Alabama, Virginia, Mississippi, and Carolinas, rejoiced to see elected Governor of a Southern slave State!
It was seeing the position of Johnson on this question that induced the "Democratic Herald" in Ohio, in June, 1855, thus to notice our race for Governor:
"Tennessee. – An animated contest is going on in this good old Democratic State for Governor, and the largest crowds flock to hear the candidates that ever attended political meetings since the Hero of New Orleans used to address the masses in person. The present incumbent, Andrew Johnson, is the Democratic candidate, and a Mr. Gentry, a pro-slavery renegade from the Federal Whig ranks, is the opposing candidate, brought out by a Know Nothing conclave. This man is on the stump abusing the Catholics, and denouncing them for their tyranny, while he openly advocates the slavery doctrines of Southern Niggerdom! On the other hand, his competitor, Gov. Johnson, well and favorably known to our leading Democrats of Ohio, HAS NO SYMPATHIES WITH SLAVERY, and is the advocate of such amendments to the Federal Constitution as will give all power to the people, and EFFECTUALLY PUT DOWN THE INSTITUTION OF SLAVERY!"
Now, this showing up of Democracy, on the Slavery question, may look shabby to many ultra Southern men, and it may induce them to charge that the Democratic party are inconsistent. We defend them against the charge of inconsistency, and maintain that what would be called inconsistency here, is nothing but Democracy. For instance, A. O. P. Q. X. Y. Z. Nicholson, the editor of the great official organ of Democracy at Washington, said, editorially, and "by authority," so late as 1855:
"IT IS NO PART OF THE CREED OF A DEMOCRAT, AS SUCH, TO ADVOCATE OR OPPOSE THE EXTENSION OF SLAVERY. HE MAY DO THE ONE OR THE OTHER, IN THE EXERCISE OF HIS RIGHTS AS A CITIZEN, AND NOT OFFEND AGAINST HIS DEMOCRATIC FEALTY!"
Precisely so! A man may advocate the abolition of slavery where it exists; he may, as a Black Republican, arm himself with Sharpe's rifle, and go into Kansas, and shoot down pro-slavery men, and still be a consistent Democrat, if he vote for the party, and stand by the nominees of the party conventions! Hence, all the factions at home and from abroad – all religions – all the ends and odds of God's creation are now associated together, and are battling in the same unholy cause, in the name of Democracy!
And further to exhibit the inconsistency of this Democratic and Foreign party, it will be recollected that, in 1844, they nominated Silas Wright, of New York, for Vice-President, to run on the ticket with Col. Polk – a position he declined, because he would not agree to be second best on the ticket. In a letter to James H. Titus, Esq., bearing date April 15, 1847, Mr. Wright says:
"If the question had been propounded to me at any period of my public life, Shall the arms of the Union be employed to conquer, or the money of the Union be used to purchase Territory now constitutionally free, for the purpose of planting Slavery upon it, I should have answered, No! And this answer to this question is the Wilmot Proviso, as I understand it. I am surprised that any one should suppose me capable of entertaining any other opinion, or giving any other answer as to such a proposition."
Now, if Silas Wright, one of the great "Northern lights" of Democracy, held these sentiments in 1847, what must they have been in 1844, when that party sought to elevate him to the second office within the gift of the nation? But we are just reminded of what is said in "the law and the prophets," that is to say, "It is no part of the creed of a Democrat, as such, to advocate or oppose the extension of slavery!" What a party!