Bradford reporter. [volume] (Towanda, Pa.) 1844-1884, 1856-12-04


ton, the people of the United States have sane
toned and announced.
They have asserted the constitutional equal
ity of each and all of the States of the Union
as States they have affirmed the constitution
al equality of each and all of the citizens of
the United States as citizens, whatever their
religion, wherever their birth or their residence;
they have maintained the inviolability of the
constitutional rights of the different sections of
the Union and they have proclaimed their
devoted and unaIterable attachment to the
Union and to the Constitution, as objects of
interest superior to all subjects of local or sec
tional controversy, as the safeguard of the
rights of ALL as the spirit and the essence of
the liberty, peace and greatness of the Re-
public.
In doing this, they have, at the same time,
emphatically condemned the idea of organizing
in these United States mere geographical par
ties of marshalling in hostile array toward
each other the different parts of the country,
North or South, East or West
Schemes of this nature, ,fraught with incalcu,
liable mischief and which the considerate sense
of the people has rejected, could have had
countenance in no part of the country, had
they not been diSguized by suggestions plausi-
BILE in appearance, acting upon an excited state
of the public mind induced by causes Temporal
ry in their character, and it is to be hoped tran
Sent in their influence.
Perfect liberty of association for political OBJ
iects and the widest scope of discussion, are
the received and ordinary conditions of govern
ment in our country. Our institutions, framed
in the spirit of confidence in the intelligence
and integrity of the people, do not forbid cit-
Zens either Individually or associated together
TO attack 10y writing, speech, or any other me-
thods short of physical force, the Constitution
and the very existence of the Union. Under
the shelter of this great liberty, and protected
by the laws and usages of the Government
they assail, associations have been formed, in
some of the States, of individuals, who, pre-.
tending to seek only to prevent the spread of
the institution of Slavery into the present or
future inchoate States of the Union, are really
infamed with desire to ch hlnge the domestic in
stitutions of existing States.
To accomplish their objects, they dedicate
themselves to the odious task of depreciating
the government organization which stands in
their way, and of eliminating, with indiscrm-
mate invcctiVe, not only the citizens of par
ticular States, with whose laws they find fault,
but all others of their feliow-citizens through
out the country, who do not participate with
| them in their assaults upon the Constitution
framed and adopted by our fathers, and claim
ing for the privileges it has secured and the
blessings it has conferred, the steady support
and grateful reverence of their children. They
seek an object which they well know to be a
revolutionary one. They are perfectly aware
that the change in the relative condition of
the white and black races in the slave-holdng
States, which they would promote, is beyond
their lawful authority that to them it is a
foreign object that it cannot be effected by
any peaceful instrumentality of theirs that
for them, and the States of which they are
citizens, the only path to its accomplishment is
through burning cities, and ravaged fields, and
| slaughtered populations, and all there is most
terrible in foreign, complicated with civil and
servile war and that the first step in the at
tempt is the forcible disruption of country
embracing in its broad bosom degree of lib
erty, and an amount of individual and public
prosperity, to which there is ne parallel in his
tory, and substituting in its place hostile gov
ernments, driven at once and inevitably into
mutual devastation and fratricidal carnage.
Transforming the now peaceful and felicitous
| brotherhood into vast permanent camp of
armed men like the rival monarchies of Europe
and Asia. Well knowing that such and such
only, are the means and the consequences of
their plans and purposes, they endeavor to pre-
pare the people of the United States for civil
war by doing everything in their power to de-
priye the Constitution and the laws of moral
authority, and to undermine the fabric of the
Union by appeals to passion and sectional pre-
judce, by indoctrinating its people with recip-
rocal hatred, and by educating them to stand
face to face as enemies, rather than shoulder
| to shoulder as friends.
1t is by the agency of such unw arrantable
interference, foreign and domestic, that the
minds of many, otherwise good citizens, have
been so inaamcd into the passionate, condem-
nation of the domestic institutions of the
Southern States, as at length to pass insensi-
bly, to almost equally passionate hostility to-
ward their fellow-citizens of those States, and
thus finally to fall into temporary fellowship
with the avowed and active enemies of the
Constitution. Ardently attached to liberty in
the abstract, they do not stop to consider prac-
tically how the objects they would attain can
be accomplished, nor to reflect that, even if
the evil were as great as they deem it, they
have no remedy to apply, and that it can be
only aggravated by their violence and uncon-
stltulIohai actlon. "A question, which is one
of the most difficult of all the problems of So
cial institution, political economy and states
manship, they treat with unre asoning intem-
pcrance of thought and language. Extremes
beget extremes. Violent attack from the North
finds lis inevitable consequence in the growth
of spirit of angry defiance at the South
Thus in the progress of events we had reached
that consummation, which the voice of the peo-
pie has now SO pontedly rebuked of the at
tempt, of portion of the States, by section
al organization and movement to usurp the
control of the Government of the United
States.
confidently believe that the great body of