The weekly Lancaster gazette. (Lancaster, Ohio) 1852-1855, 1854-07-27
THR LIVE IssuE.-The anti.Nebraska
CITY OF LANCASTER.

1HE LIVE 1SsUE.-Ihe ant-NeDraska
movement is undoubtedly The live Issue of
the day. The political cauldron is begin
ming to boil all over the country. The old
revolutionary spirit is still burning as
brightly as in seventy-six, andnow as then,
the watch cry is Liberty or Death" 1t
is useless, aye, worse than folly, to talk
longer about Northern concession, for the
North has already conceded too much
Like the poor Indian on the log, another
step and we are PROSTATE upon the earth,
perhaps never 10 rise. But the die is
cast, the North is aunite and determined
to "sTAND STILL STRONG" No outside is
sues can move the mighty phalanx that
stands arrayed against slavery propaganda
ism. The word has gone forth-sthe re-
peal ofthe repeal" and the echo can be
heard all over the land. Since the forma-
ton of our Government there has not been
aperiod in which true and loyal patriots
were more loudly called on than at the
present time to rally in their might under
the banner Of the Constitution. That sacred
instrument has been violated by those who
were sworn to support it and it has be-
come the duty of all who reverence it and
are anxious to preserve the free institutions
established under it, to come up in the
majesty oftheir strength to its rescue
: Never before was itmore important that
the free people of. the North should dis
charge their duty, their whole duty to their
country. 1t is for them to decide whether
in the future men shall be elected to Con-
gress who are the political friends of the
present Administration willing and anxious
to sustain the present Executive in all his
ruinous projects of slavery propagandism,
or by those who are stern and r~esolute in
their determination to arrest him in his mad
career, and to thwart a nefarious. policy,
which, if pursued, must bring on the ma
ton a series of results that will dishonor
our Government and disgrace our people
in the estimation of the civilized world.
This is the question which the people of
the United States are called on to decide,
and all rejecting persons must agree with
US that the decision of aquestiono Of, graver
importance was " rsnbmitted to the peo-
pie Of the country.
The present crisis is one ofthose periods
in which the genuine patriot feels himself
irresistibly summoned to follow the path of
duty. 1t is not a time for %supineness and
repose; but it is most emphatically a time
for earnest and indefatigable action. Re-
pose and inactivity are 'fmeral treason
when the country calls on her sons to come
to her support, when she points them to
a bleeding Constitution and invokes their
aid to rescue it from the hands of the spoil
ers, and when she iptreats them by the
fears and crimes that make the horizon of
the future wrathful and gloomy, to arrest
the downward progress of the government
towards confusion, anarchy and slavery, Of
such "moraltreason' no true American can
be guilty.
Freemen of the North, did you not by
solemn compact with the South, forever
prohibit the farther extension of slavery be.
yond certain limits? Have we not honored,
aye, revered the wisdom Of this compro.
mise by calling it sacred? Did the North
ask for its repeal? Did the great mass Of
the American people ask for its repeal? II
we had no other objections to the repea
of the Missouri Compromise, we should op.
pose it On the grounds that the sentiments
Ofthe people in regard to this measure had
never been publicly expressed eitheI
through the newspapers of the country
upon the rostrum or by petitions to Con
gress, and that it originated in the brain o
one man and was pushed forward for self
aggrandiscment.
If the people had desired the repeal 9th,
Missouri Compromise, how did it harper
that no petitions were presented 10 the Con
gress of the United States praying for it
consummation? On the contrary, petitio
after petition was presented earnestly i'm
ploring Congress not to open the hood-gate
of human slavery by repeating tha
time-honered compact. Yet these petition
of the citizens Of a free country were un
heeded,-treated with contempt and scor
and even the right Of petition denied certai
free citizens of the United States,
Would it not be the worst kind of slave
ry for the free people ofthe North to sui
mitt to such tyranny? Is the right ofspeec
TO be denied us by the southern dict whic
has gone forth declaring that the "Nort
has no earthly right to interfere with til
institution of slaveryg' If we are to SUI
nit to such tyranny as this what transps
rent humbuggery'it is in us to pirate abol
American Freedom? Isit possible, thel
that the North has no voice in the contr
of our territories, and that all must |
brought in under the auspices and be go
erned bv the institutions ofthe South? III