The Evansville daily journal. [volume] (Evansville, Ia. [i.e. Ind.]) 1848-1862, 1853-08-17
Catching at Straws.

Our neighbor of the Enquirer is getting
remarkably technical in his drowning condi.
ton, and endeavors to escape the force o.
some stubborn facts upon which we have
been feeding him, by forcing his own con.
struction upon the language of the Journal
and changing its punctuation so as to make II
read, not the more palatable to himself, but
as il we did not know what we were talking
about.
If the Enquirer man insists upon making
us say that jeff. Davis "spit upon the Baiti-
more Platform four years before it was made"
we will say, that he did"spT upon the planks
out of which it was formed at the Nashville
Convention, and rub it in too. But at "other
conventions held in the South" at which we
did charge him with repudiating and "spitting
upon the Baltimore Platform" and ignoring
everything else that savored of political de-
cency, we have only to refer our neighbor for
the proof, to an extract from one of the "gal-
liant Secretary's" speeches, published in yes.
terday's Journal, where he will also fl nd other
democratic authorities, high in his own esti-
nation, to the same point.
The Enquirer accuses us of rashness, and
of being slightly uniformed" in relation to
Gen. Lanes position, in regard to the ap-
pointment Of Jeff. Davis and the Senate's
protest. We can assure the gentleman that
we are perfectly posted in the matter.
We might perhaps find it quite as difficult
to prove to the hair-splitting sense of the En-
qurer man, Gen. Lanes precise knowledge
of the "protest," as he would TO prove that
the General knew nothing about it until just
three weeks after Davis's appointment. 1t
required 10 witchcraft on the part of the Gen.
eral to know all about this matter, and it is
we'll known here that Gen. Lane felt the in
dignity offered to the soldiery of our State by
Jeff. Davis. more keenly perhaps than any
man in it, and that he did assure some of his
friends in this city that the appointment OF
Jeff. Davis was out of the question, and that
for the people of Indiana to implore General
Pierce not to appoint him, would only be to
insult his judgment and patriotism.
The Enquirer repeats "that it is time to
doubt mans orthodoxy when the Journal
holsters him up, and beseeches democrats
not to be silly enough to be deceived by its
protestatioaS.
Our object has been to un-deceive demo-
Gratis, and in that object we have been sue
cessful by showing that the Enquirer holsters
up men who are not democrats, but disunionists
and renegades, and denounces men whom
the people endorse with their votes as ortho-
dox, with the not very complim entary sobri-
quet of "unprincipled demagogues."
We were aware that we were hitting raw
sore on cur neighbors political back, but our
earnestly to know what style of politics and
politicians he desired to "bolster up" is our
apology for agitating the subject so long, and
discovering that our amiable contemporary his
imbibed distaste for the subject will now
drop the matter, until he again opens his bat
teries upon those "unprincipled demagogues,"
when " shall come in to the rescue. The
"bad latin" quotation, by which our neighbor
cautions his fellow democrats to "beware of
the Journal, even when it puffs you," evinces
that his experience in triiing " it'll our puff
balls has been rather disagreeable. Those
Of our democratic friends who buy and pay
for their puffs, need no cautionng as to their
danger or value.