Mineral Point tribune. [volume] (Mineral Point, Wis.) 1854-1858, 1856-08-19
THE TRUE DEMOCRACY.

stcn hefd at syracuse on the 24th ult., an
address was adopted from which we make
the following extracts
FELLOW DEMOCRATS. The time has
come for Democrats to declare their inde-
pendence of those packed conventions that
have lately assumed to dictate the meas
ures and the candidates of the Democra-
cy. That party of glorious memory, that
once spoke and acted for Freedom, has
fallen into the hpnds of office holders and
political adventurers, serving as the tools
Of slaveholding oligarchy. For more than
ten years the measures of the General
Government have been directed mainly to
the increase of slave States. One meas
ure has followed up another, each bolder
than the last, until we have violence ru-
ling in the Federal Capitol and civil war
raging in the Territories.
For the contamination of each meas
ure, the venal have been purchased, the
umid frightened by threats of disunion,
the peace loving soothed by promises of
future quietness, and the reluctant and re-
sisting slenced or overborne by the clam
or and force of party. Each success has
led to new aggression, until at last the
weak man now at the head of the Gov
ernment, stimulated by Senator from IL
lnois, in a rivalry for Presidential NOM
lnation, and believing the best means of
reaching it was to secure the entire sonth-
ern vote, and the best means of obtaining
that, new sacrifice to slavery, attempted
to force through Congress the repeal of
an existing law, by which compromise
had been affected by our fathers more than
third of century past. These rival
demagogues succeeded in affecting the re-
peal, though they lost their reward.
BY this act of crime, unparalleled even
in our day q political crime, one of the
fairest regions of our country, and, in
deed, Of the world; has been converted
into field of battle, where citizens of
common country are fighting with each
other for the introduction of human serv-
itude. Such another spectacle the world
does not present. And the end of it is
dependent upon the event of the Presi-
Dental election.
The same spirit which contrived the
Kansas conspiracy, already hints that the
prohibition of the slave trade is an unjust
discrimination against the South. And
why not9 If slavery be no evil, or if a
Federal legislator may not legislate on the
idea that it is an evil, why shoul he make
it puracy to bring a slave into the country?
Why not let each man buy, according to
his own conscience, what he finds to be
property, or, that which IS the same thing,
what he finds everywhere to be salable?
The same principle which justifies the
Kansas act must Justify the slave trade,
and condemn, as an infringement upon
the equal rights of the south, the exclu-
sion of the foreign traffic. That step be-
ing taken, and it IS the next if the pres
ent succeeds, then slavery is virtually es-
tablished in all our States, for, according
to the high Federal, or, as the phrase is,
the National doctrine of some of our
courts. whatever Congress authorizes 10
be imported may be sold any law of any
State to the contrary Notwithstanding.
No, fellow Democrats, our only safety
is to stop where we are-to make Kansas
Free State-to punish the authors of
the present agitation, and Ii that way, for
that is the only way in which it can be
done, put an end to the Slavery agita-
ton.
How is this to be accomplished BY
rejecting the Cincinnati Convention and
its nomInees-for they are lnseparable.
That Convention met while the country,
or, at least all but the southern part of 1t,
stood grieved and shocked by the violence
and lawlessness in Washington and Kan
sas But not a word of disapprobation did
the Convention utter. They resolved up
on certain truisms which nobody has ever
Il !.
Bank of the United States, as if anybody
had dreamed on such a thing for years
subject just as pertinent to our present
circumstances as the Virginia or Kentucky
resolutions; and then gravely resolved that
every new State must form It's own insti-
tutions, by imputation denying both to
Congress and to the Territorial legisla-
ture the right to exclude Slavery. 1t must
also be borne in mind that the authors of
the Kansas act and the nominees of the
Cincinnati Convention have, to this day,
declined to say that the people of the Ter
ritories have the right to exclude Sla-
very.
Who does not know that no free State
has ever yet been admitted into the Union
into which, as Territory, Slavery was
w UO uOeS llOt KNOW tlldl clti-
very will 60 wherever a STAKEHOLDER goes,
if he is permitted to take it with him;that
Slavery exists in Kentucky In a higher
latitude than some counties of Ohio and
Indiana and in Missouri, several hundred
miles further north than the southern linn
its of the free state of Illinois; that it Is
an institution easily planted in the infancy
of settlements, and most difficult to be
eradicated in their maturity.
Then it is asked what interest it is to
US whether the people of Kansas have sla-
very or nots
Is it of no interest to the people of this
generation that Virginia is slave Statez
If she had been free, what would now
have been her population, wealth and re-
sourcess Her rivers white with sails, her
ships all over the globe, her lands cultiva-
,oI ll,a Gordon IF ~ had fallen t,t n 10