Washington sentinel., 1854-02-05
INDIscREET FRIENDs MORE DAM
GEROUs THAN ENEMIES.

Indiscreet friends are often more danger.
Gus than open enemies. In politics they are
always so. The course of some of the Journals
that jealously sustain the bill for organizing
the territories of Kansas and Nebraska is cal
culated to make enemies rather than friends
to wit, among large class of whigs the in
clination of whose minds is in its favor.
Why treat this bill as party measureg ? Why
endeavor, by taunts, reproaches, and menaces,
to drive off from it the support OF one OF the
great political divisions of the country? The
questions involved in this bill, as We have said
| more than once, are far above the mere ephem-
eral and transient issues that separate po-
| tical parties. man may be in favor of
this bill, no matter what his political com
plexion, no matter whether he be whig or dem
ocrat. The object of this measure is not to
create new or perpetuate old party divisions.
1t is not to build up one party or to pull down
another. 1t is to settle, upon sure and con.
stitutional basis, a great and disturbing sec
tional issue.
Then how indiscreet, how absurd it is, in
people who wish it well, who are deeply solici-
bone of contention between the two great parties
Of the country, and thus leopard its success.
1t is true that the democratic party is en-
phatically the State-rights party, and all sound
democrats, from whatever section they may
come, viii be expected to vote for this settle
ment; but it is also true that there is a State
rights wing of the whig party, whose influence
and whose support may be conciliated by just
and judicious course, or may be lost by taunts
and reproaches that are as unjust as they are
unwise. From the northern whig party we ex-
pect nothing. We never hoped for the aid of
those known as the "woony yheads." From the
/" silverIgrays we did expect cooperation, but
from present indications we are led to fear that
they are about to fall from their high estate
and to join their freesoil brethren. The whig
party of the south knows no such divisions as
woolly-heads and silver-grays" They all
claim to be true on the subject of slavery and,
if left to follow their impulses, their sympathies,
their convictions, they will doubtless rally to
the support Of Judge Douglass bill. If they
do not, then the whig party Of the south will
be forever dishonored and disbanded.
In view of the necessity for harmony and
cooperation between southern men of every
hue and stripe we invoke our brethren of the
press to cease their il-judged efforts to excite
party rancour. That the whole south is united,
we do not doubt; but that divisions may be
produced, by infammatory appeals to one party
and bitter and premature denunciations of the
other, is also equally certain.
Those who fail when the point comes, those
who desert in the hour of need, those who re-
fuse to stand by the friends of the Constitution
and of equal rights in the pending emergency,
will deserve whitening scorn and blasting an
athemas. But that scorn and those anathemas
should follow, and not precede this recreancy.
For our part we do not, we cannot, doubt that
the wings of the south will be true, loyal, and
unAinching. Already many leading whig pa
pers in the south have come out in favor Of the
Nebraska bill. None that we know of have
declared against it. We can also add that all
persons from the south, irrespective of party,)
with whom we have conversed, are warmly in
favor of the bill.