The southern press. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1850-1852, 1851-08-09
From the Southern (aihens) Herald
Col. Lamar's Letter TO the WO0dviIIe Com
mlttee.
ATHENS, July Q, 1856


GENTLEMEN: am in receipt of your letter
of the Dist ultimo, and regret that prior engage
ments forbid my acceptance Of the invitation to
be with you at Woodville on the 4th inst You
will have my sympathies, and trust will real
ize the ardent desires Of the most sanguine, in
giving proper direction to public sentiment,
and that the good people of Greene, will in DC.
tober next as they did in 1928, present an
unbroken plaanx in support of the rights of
the States They were then energetic and de-
csiye in the assertion of those rights as adopted
by the State rights convention of Georgia and as
exempfed and expounded by the Virginia and
Kentucky resolutions Their moral courage.
too, was equa to the occasion; they indicated,
maintained, and supported those republican
principles with sternne-s Of resolve, and I'M
wavering consistency, which ELECTED the admira-
ton of their friends, and made them peculiarly
their own. The intelligent people of Greene
can but perceive that the present issues involve
the same cardinal principles Of our government,
and you are right in urging and seriously pre-
sentng to their consideration the position occu-
pied by the respective political parties in the
present crisis.
In 1898 and 90, when federal encroachments
were rife, and the lights Of the State endangered
by the centralized action of the federal govern.
ment, Jefferson, Monroe, and Madison became
the vigilant and eloquent champions of those
rights. They saw that the constitutional rights
of the States and people could only be preserved
by a strict construction of that instrument, that
the usurpations which gave existence TO the alien
and sedtion laws, were destructive of the hap
piness and liberty of the people, and would, IN
less they were resisted and controlled, subvert
and change our government of confederate
States into national despotism. Their patriot
ism was not crcumscrbed ard limited by cold,
calculating chances Of federal offices or emolu
ments. The sedition law. with its pains, penal
ties, and imprisonments, could no overawe or
intimidate them. They serted aloud and spared
not" until the fedral usurpers we're hurled from
power, and the States ard the people were rein
stated the full fruition of that liberty and those
rights, which are enumerated and defined by the
resolutions to which have adverted, and which
form the political creed of the republican party.
For this ardent, patriotic zeal and unhnching
fidelity to the rights of the States and people
they are denounced by the federal party as
Jacobins, factionists and disunonists.-- why
then should the Southern States rights party,
the faithful adherents to those republican doc
trines, expect or desire to escape the denuncla-
tons of the opposing party, with the Old federal
leaven in III They have, IL is true, changed their
name, and ransacked the English vocabulary to
find epithets sufficiently opprobious for their
second edition of Islander, and we are called fire.
eaters, disunionisis, and rebels Are we fire.
eaters, because we are Jealous OF power, vigi-
liant in watching its epcroachments and sound
the alarm Of the first movement of usurpalon 7"
Better, far better to be too anvlons in our Mp.
prehcnsions, than 10 be ruined by too confident