Fremont journal. [volume] (Fremont, Sandusky County [Ohio]) 1853-1866, 1855-12-07
"watchman, what of the night


Estray, taken up.
| WatchmaII, what of the nigIltlo
Congress has once more assembled. We
hope not merely to do the usual amount of
spouting drinking, gambling buying and
selling, and fighting. The North has sent
to Washington body of men from whom
it expects something better than to turn the
halls of the Capitol into national bear
garden. They have been sent there to
wrest the sceptre from the hand of the
slave power, and to revive throughout all
the departments and functions of the Fed
eral Government, the spirit of freedom that
was breathed into it by the fathers Of the
Republic. The North expects each man to
do his duty, and woe be to him who betrays
the sacred cause of liberty. 1t were better
for that man that mill ssone were hanged
about his neck, and that he were drowned
beyond the reach of the deep sea Lead
The ewes of the North are fixed on their
Representatives with determined watch
fulness, bv side of which the miser's guard
on his gold is sleep and negligence. They
demand no invasion of the rights of the
South. They wish to see no interference
with their peculiar institution within the
limits where it now dwells. But they ask
that the further spread of slavery shall be
stopped. They demand that the character
of this Government shall be fixed as hence
forth friendly to liberty. They require that
the laws of slave States shall not be extend
ed over the free States.
The North has seen one ofits judges de-
Gliding that the master may carry his slave
into free State and hold him at his pleas
ure, but it does not mean ever to hear an
other such decision; it has seen one of its
Governors ordering the delivery of free
State citizen for an alleged offence against
slave State law, committed, if at all, not in
the slave but the free State; but it never
means to have another such Governor
The North means to settle it at once and
forever, that its citizens who have not been
in slave State, shall not be accused ol
crimes under slave State laws, and be de-
livered to the tender mercies of slavery tri-
bunals. If we allow these things we might
better exchange places with the slave him
self and know the worst. No man at the
North who is known as opposed to slavery
can count on safety in his own home. He
may be accused of breaking slave State law,
and the first he shall hear of it will be a
: warrant from some trucking, white-livered
Governor for his delivery into the hands Of
southern women-whippers. From such a
warrant his only security will be to fly, as
one citizen of Indiana has already fed
We talk of Austrian and Russian despotism,
but give us the rigors of both combined be-
fore subiection to the laws and tribunals
of the South.
During this session of Congress the great
battle ofliberty is to be fought The men
of the bowie-knife, the lash and the thumb
screw, already read their coming fall. The
common sentiment of mankind, the united
voice of the North, and more than all, every
attribute of the Almighty, is against them.
| They cry out that to prevent slavery is "sec-
tionalism;"- and this from men who have
been thoroughly and only sectional since
this Government was formed. They tell
us that five shut up slavery where it is, the
Union will be dissolved. Who will dissolve
it? If thief enters my house at night and
] resist him, he raises his revolver, and firm
" tells me that unless l cease resistance
murder will be committed? Who willcom,
nit murder! There is but one remedy fol
the agitation of the slavery question, and
that Is to settle it beyond hope, that the flag
of this Union shall never wave over anoth.
er foot of slave territory; that no slave car
breathe in free State; that no citizen ofa
free State is amenable to the bloody and
hell-dcrived creed of slavery. When these
things are once settled, the South and the
North will have peace, the Union will not
; be destroyed, and the amazing spectacle OF
: a republic extending slavery while despots
abolish it, will no longer astonish the world