The republic. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1849-1853, 1851-09-25
From Me Ne,O Orleans True Delta.
10 President and his Friends.


try its honored head found himself deserted by
every civil Federal officer, whose special duty
it is to maintain his authority the administrator
of the laws of his country, and his desires set at
naugkt, his policy derided or disregarded by the
presses heretofore understood to be the opponents
of his party and his administration. We are not
of those who believe that the day never arrive
when the orders of the President will be condemned
or defeated by officers to their faithful OBJ
servance and discharge; we might have enter
tanned that opinion once, butt painful as the con-
fession is, we think SO no longer; yet do think
that Willard Fillmore owes it to himself to the
great party whose representative he is, to the inn
country whose destinies are for the time be-
ing entrusted to his hands, that if such treason
during his Administration, he will apply the
needful corrective, and not permit precedent
dangerous, SO discredtable, so seditious, to date
from this year of republican government.
The question for the last six weeks, to the indie
lible disgrace of our city, has not been whether
Willard Fillmore an honest capable, enght-
ened and faithful servant-that not disputed
but if we should recognise his authority, the laws
of the Confederacy, the flag of our country, of
these United States.
That was the question at issue, not the integrity
of an upright and honorable Chief Magistrate; and
SO forward in defending unassailable servant
of the people Willard Fillmore, entirely silent
to the that led them into open and audacious
disregard of his authority and the statutes of the
country.
Why don't the Administration and quasi -Admi-
nistration papers apologize to their readers for
their outrageous abandonment Of the Government
and the monstrously deceptive publications with
which their columns were burdcned, 80 long as
falsehood had leg to stand upon, or q mob to
yell after it in our usually tranquil thorough
fares?
No good, intelligent citizen, requires apologies
for the conduct of the President; the past integ-
rty of his life, and the purity of his conduct since
an inscrutable Providence called him to power,
before the American people, and fully appreciated
and thoroughly understood; why then these news
paper excuses, unless the writer's hope to divert
public scrutiny from their own inexcusably repre-
hensible behavior, on the principle pursued by
loose women, who seek to lessen their own guilt
by trying to include the whole sex in their own
category.
President Fillmore, we think, will feel very
little obliged to his eloquent apoogists just lit
tie to his subordnaes in this city, who cupably
disregarded the laws, and openly contravened his
authority, and to our ideas it would be infinitely
shadow of his name, IMMUNITY for their ownsmis-
deeds, they come out with frank, manly and re-
spectful explanations of their conduct which,
however viewed, whether regards themselves,
the city whence their lucubrations ernanated, is
without parallel, unusual, improper and mex
cusable.
1t has been customary with no uncomfortable
portion of the Union press of this city to speak
harshly of wild toasts and not very delicate
creditabe sentiments uttered at notification jun
ketings in Carolina; but nothing that has trans
pired in that State amounted to overt act of
treason TO the Union, or to any thing like close
an approach to it as the acts and intentions we
have seen advocated in the columns of even the
Administration journals of this city within the last
thirty days.
Not only was the Federal authority derided, it
openly dsregarded, and appeals made to place
in the hands of an avowed enemy ofthe Union
thousands of dollars and thousands of men; and il
was proposed to do this without asking him his
purposes, auditing his accounts, or controlling his
movements. Every thing, in TRUTH was done to
weaken the popular affection for the constituted
authorities of the Union, and to wean the people
from their hereditary devotion to their inesimabe
institutions. But it was not at home only that
disrespectfu illusions to the faithful servants of
regard of authority, the most contemptuous allu-
sions made to our naval officers, than whom
a more gallant, senstively honorable or patriotic
body of citizens do not exist AS sample of the
disgraceful feeling, take the following para
graph from a letter written by the special CORE
spondent of the Picayune at Havana, which APP
peared on Saturday last in that journal over the
signature of Justitia
pThe United States steamship Saranac, Com.
Parker, arrived here this morning, and it was ru-
mored that she had on ,ard diplomatic agent
from the United States Government, commissioned
to demand an account of the shooting of fifty
Americans, and the firing into the Falcon. / hope
this is true, our commodores have heretofore
made but poor diplomatists, being generally out
manouvred by the Spanish authorities here. 1t is
said that the usual plan is, when the commodore
visits the captain general to make his demand the
latter generally invites him to dinner, where he
treats him we'll that the old fellow generally goes
on board fuddled, and the next morning pulls up
his anchor and goes home perfectly satisfied"
Ifany foreign scribbler had intimated that 1t was
only necessary in order to get rid of the interior
ence Of United States commodore in a foreign
port, when matters of great importance to his
country at stake, to invite him to dinner and
make him drunk, every man in every portion of
these States would have denounced him a vile
calumniator; but so blunted have the popular sem
sibities become of late, that he only is esteemed
true patriot who is most extravaganza in his abuse
of his own government and its ministers.
We think it about time that there return
to the old state Of things at least so on the part of
those journals which affect to be Union in princi-
pie, but which principle, it would appear from re-
cent experience, is either attendant of their Gu
pidity, the slave of the first mob sufficiently nu
merous to make the night hideous with their dis
cordances
Come on, contemporaries. Leave the President
to the people, and let them have what they more
earnestly require, little matter vindicatory of
yourselves and your publications since the COM
mencement Of the Cuba business.
Com. r. B. CUNNINeHAM has been roattached to
the navy yard at Gosport, Virginia.