Orleans independent standard. [volume] (Irasburgh, Vt.) 1856-1871, 1856-12-12

and claiming for the privileges it has Sc
cured. and the blessings it has conferred
the steady support and greatful reverence
of their children.
They seek an object which they well
know to be revolutionary one. 1hey
are perfectly aware that the change IN
the relative condition of the white and
black races in the slaveholding States,
which they would promote is beyond
their lawful authority; that to them 1t IS
a foreign object; that it cannot be etfec-
ted by any peaceful fundamentally 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
seryile war and that the first step IN
the attempt is the forcible disruption OF
a country embracing in its broad bosom a
degree of liberty, and an amount OF IN
dividual and public prosperity, to which
there is no parallel in history, and sub
shutting in its place hostile governments,
driven at once and inevitably into mutual
devastation and fratricidal:carnage, trans
forming the now peaceful and felicitous
brotherhood into vast permanent camp
of armed men like the rival monarchles
of Europe and Asia.
Well knowing that such, and such
only, are the means and consequences o.
their plans and purposes, they endeavol
to prepare the people of the United State;
for civil war by doing everything in theil
power to deprive the Constitution ant
the laws of moral authority, and to un
dermine the fabric of the Union by ap
peals to passion and sectional prejudice
by matchmaking its people with recipro
cal hatred, and by educating them Il
stand face to face as enemies, rather thai
shoulder to shoulder as friends.
1t is by the agency of such unwarran
table interference, foreign and domestic
that the minds of many, otherwise goo
citizens, have been so inhamed into til
passionate condemnation of the domesti
institutions of the Southern States, as q
length to pass insensibly to almost equa
ly passionate hostility towards their fe
low citizens of those States, and thu
finally to fall into temporary FELLOWSHIP
with the avowed and active enemies {
the Constitution. Ardently attached
liberty in the abstract, they do nc
stop to consider practically how the OF
Ijects they would attain can be accomplish
ed, nor to reflect that, even if the ev
were as great as they deem it, they hav
no remedy to apply, and that it can b
only aggravated by their violence an
unconstitutional action.
A question, which is one of the mo
difficult of all the problems of social il
stitution, political economy and state
manship, they treat with unreasoning il
temperance of thought and languag
Extremes beget extremes. Violent a
tacks from the North finds its ineyitab
consequence in the growthof a spin
of angry defiance at the Sonth.--
: Thus in the progress of events we hs
: reached that contamination, which Il
voice of the people has now so pointed
: rebuked of the attempt, of a portion
the States, by a sectional organizatit
and movement, to usurp the control of Il
government of the United States.
| confidently believe that the gre
f body Of those, who iuconsiderately to-
e this fatal step, are sincerely attached
a the constitution and the Union. Th,
: would upon deliberation, shrink wit
unaffected horror from any conscious a
of disunion or civil war. But they ha
a entered into path which leads nowhel
: unless it be to civil war and disunio
|, and which has no other possible outlet.
t They have proceeded thus far in til
: direction in consequence ofthe SUGGEST
stages of their progress having consist
f of a series Of secondary issues, each
: which professed to be confined with
; constitutional and peaceful limits, b
which attempted indirectly what fe
: men were willing to do directly, that
: to act aggressively against the constit
y tional rights of nearly one-half of Il
i. thirty-one States.
f In the long series of acts of indire
: aggression, the first was the strenuo
S agitation, by citizens of the northe
r States, in Congress and out of it, of t
r question of negro emancipation in t
+ southern States.
e The second step in this path of ev
consists of acts of the people of t
Z, northern States, and in several