Green-Mountain freeman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1844-1884, 1855-08-23
THE ISSUE OF THE COMING ELECTION

Our annual election, Freemen of Vermont, is
again almost at hand. One week from next
Tuesday, you will be called on to bestow your
sufrages on the State nominees by whom your
political principles are to be represented; and
to do this understandingiy, it behooves you to
comprehend clearly and definitely what is the
true political issue now before the country 80
that you may not be drawn into the support of
men, however personally unobjectionable, whose
election would 60 to strengthen ahd advance the
side Of that issue whose success you would re-
grct and deplore,
What then is that issue! Is it the tariff
No, nobody pretends it. That issue, by tho
mutual consent Of the old parties, was left to
die natural death many years ago. Is it the
United. States Bank, Or any question of nation
al currency! No, that was dead long before
the other Is it then in short, any one of the
issues that divided, or In the least distinguished
the old Democratic and Wing parties, up to the
year 1850! No, not one of them. Every such
issue was put to its last sleep by the events of
that memorable political year, which, in the
passage of the black Fugitive Slave Law, in re-
atty, commenced the new, long foretold. and,
by our early statesmen, long dreaded era in
American politics-the advent of the exclusive
struggle between Slavery and Freedom for the
mastery-the era whose first distinguishing
measure, in the act referred to, shvered the
Wing party, then in power, to pieces, and left
the other with but the prestige of name
Party pride, however, on the part Of the Wings,
and that prestige of the name, ON the part of
the Democrats, operated on those Old parties to
keep up their organizations. q few years longer.
And in 1852 the doubtful and staggered masses
of the North, seeing the platforms of that year
alike pro-Slavery, Disguised at the pro-Slavery
Administration of Fillmore, feeling that they
could do no worse, and hoping to- do better, gave
the old Democratic party, then blameless of the
first black measures of the new era, their last
godsend, in the electionof General Pierce. But
they soon saw, in his broken pledges, that their
hopes were not to be realized but that in pun
ishing one apostate party, they had helped an
other into power but 10 enact still greater Vi
ola.ion of their principles. And they have con-
tinued to see the Administration, thus helped
into power, under the name of Democracy
growing every day, more and more pro-Slavery
and more and more apostate to all the great
principles of Liberty laid down by Jefferson and
Madison, which it has exchanged for those Of
Adams and Hamilton as more consistent with
discourse, and as absolutely necessary to uphold
che side it has espoused, till they now behold
by its late acts in lending all its power to break
down the last barrier to Slavery in the Terrific.
sies, and in sanctioning the shameless outrages
committed to establish and spread it over those
Xerritories,-they now behold it standing open.
ly and defantly before the people of the North
as the defender, protector and champion of the
Slave power, clearly, palpaby and unmis TAXA
by arrayed on her side, and as clearly pledged
to carry out her daring schemes of propogating
and nationalising this wicked. whitening and
wo'traught Southern institution It the expense
OF Northern liberty. .v..... ....
In the meanwhile there was another party
who' taking up the old and only true Demo
cratic principles of Jefferson as fast as they wer
discarded by his old apostate disciples, had bee,
growing in strength and consequence at til
WORTH and who, under the name of the Ere
Democracy and the banner of Hale and Julian
sook their stand against the old parties ia 1859
Inns was the party of Freedom. And it wa
e"S party Who last year, seeing the disruptio