Democrat and sentinel. [volume] (Ebensburg, Pa.) 1853-1866, 1856-08-06
EBENsBURG, AUGUST 6, 1866.

| ter, Lancaster, York, Adams, Franklin, Full
ton, Bedford Somerset, Fayette and Greene;
if disunion be forced on us, and the fracture
be, as it would be, between what are popular
ly but falsely called the free and the slave
States, f1tween us and Maryland. / wish
every man could be made to understand what
frontier is. even that of civilized life. Its
daily, hourly vexations and dangers-its line
of custom houses to keep the smuggler in and
out-the crowds of fugitives from justice and
labor, infesting every avenue and conceded
in every thicket-the murderer striking down
his victim to-day and flying with the fresh
blood on his hand to foreign territory to-
morrow-the pickering, the strife. the hot
I bldssi of eoaterniuol-s elisPute-aH This
would be the daily doom of every Southern
county of this State; and across the beauti-
full valley I have spoken of would be Distress
ingly visible the actual, broad, perhaps
bloody line which disunion must trace. This
is true though hard to conceive. Pcnnsylva-
Mans and you, citizens of Franklin county,
have SO long reposed in the very centre OF the
Union, that you cannot understand how you
become frontier and how you viii suffer
when you do.
There was time, before the Union was
framed, unless my reading of history much
misleads me, when these fancied dangers
were realities Let the Union be broken,
and they will be realities again. read in
the history of your own county (and it ap-
plies to every border county) words which it
is well to think of, for they may become truth
again tomorrow:
1T surpassed" says writer, ' the pow
ers of the settlers to curb the wild and law
less spirit of the traders and frontiers men =
The Conocochcaque settlements were infested
with bands of desperate marauders and coun-
terfeiters, who bade defiance to al laws. They
had an organized line through the Cumbcr-
land Valley into Virginia. They drove a
brisk trade by stealing horses and cattle. AT
ter the British retired, they carried on an ex-
tensive trade amongst themselves by stealing
horses at the South; passing them along the
line to the North where they could not be re-
cognized, and exchanging them for others sto-
len at the North. The long narrow valleys
and secluded coves of the Blue Mountain af-
forded Il convenient route and secure hiding
places. These were no shabby villains: they
wore the finest dresses, sported the best hor
ses, and could display more jewelry than any
others in the settlements, and though the
source of their sudden wealth was suspected,
no one dared to prove it against them. When
not engaged in stealing, they resorted to
Continental money, and sauC
tering round the towns, passed it on travellers.
IF any. one resisted or threatened to bring
them to justice, his barn or crops were des-
troyed by fire." This is history, aud why may
it not become history again It is the Union
and the Constitution alone which prevent it
and you are asked to put them at risk.
This is 10 rhetorical exaggeration. It is
the sure fore cast of an inevitable trutk-and (
[ exaggerate as little when | say, that never |
until now, have felt the danger of disunlon
to be imminent. I tremble, in DO imaginary
panic, but on sober conviction, when | think /
how near it may below sure in one event
it must be- Let me in temperate and guard
ed langua re say why | think there is danger
and how Mr.. Buchanan's election can alone |
avert it.
There nov lies before me as | write, few
words of prophetic wisdom, written long be-
fore the present divisions Of parties arose, !
which are very striking. They are the words /
of John c. Fremont's father-in-faw The |
says Mr.. Benton in the early /
pages of his " Thirty Years, "s' Of geoGraph- /
ical parties Disseminated by the slave line |
would, of course, destroy the just and proper |
action of the federal government, and lead |
eventually to the separation of States. 1T.
wrote Mr.. Madison nearly forty years ago, |
when the danger was very far oil, state q
parties should arise founded on geographical |
what is to control these great re-
pulsivc masses from awful shocks against each |
other ?' Now if these be words OF wisdom,
if such are to be the probabla consequences
Of geographical parties strictly drawn, may |
not The trial of the Union be at hand In |
speaking of geographical parties, no sane man
means to say or ever has said, that the mere I
fact of the candid,.es for President and Vice |
President on ticket, being from oae section |
Of the country make party sectional or ge- |
ocraphical. Our political history Slows this |
i. not so-and it may admit of some question, |
Mr. Fremont's residence being rather anbu- |
latory, whether his is in this ssnse section |
al parry now No one yet knows exactly |
where the Vice President is TO hail iro.l |
But that which makes parry sectional and |
is the principle which underlays |
it, the influence that controls 1.-THE aggre-
gate men that compose it, the flags that are
flying overit; and looking at them now, when |
was there party more intensely and mailS- !
nantlv sectional, and more ofenslvely geo |
graphical thsu that which in the last coinage |
of counterfeits, dares to call itself Republican.
I have not time, nor is the work eongenial to |
my taste, TO point to the proof OF this. so far |
leading Abolition sgitator IN Pennsylvania !
whoi is not enrolled in the Republican ranks |
You know it in your neighborhood. | see It |
in mine. The campaign is conducted on pure !
ly Abolition principles, and those principles
are avowed to be, hostility to Southern Inter- |
ests and insult to Southern feefags Nay, |
further: so confessed is this secsionalism, that
this Republican party does not prerend to ask |
a CIR 10 oil