Green-Mountain freeman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1844-1884, 1856-01-10
The Message.

The Message.
This uninteresting document we this week
ask pardon for entailing upon our readers
For such another mass Of virtuperation, slam
der and wickedness was never, in our opinion,
put together. A more reckless frebrand was
never hurled at the portals of Freedoms fair
mansion. But from evil sometimes comes
good. 1t will more firmly bind the lover Of
justice to his policy and awaken the people to
sense of right rather than of party.
The Philadelphia american and Gazette
says:
"This extraordinary document, which has
been thrust upon the country in violence of
all former precedent, and without, so far as
we can perceive, any public necessity to justi-
fy the departure from settled usage, is calcu-
lated, if indeed it was not expressly intended,
to do grevious mischief. We do not speak
now Of those passages which relate to our
foreign affairs, or to the internal adminstra-
ton of the government, but Of the DISGUISE
ton on the Constitutional Relations of Sla-
very, which in our judgment, is as wholly
out of place in the annual message of tho
Chief Magistrate of the Republic-the hand
not of a section, but the nation-as it is in-
sultiug and offensive to the whole northern
portion of the confederacy.
OF course Mr.. Pierce knew that such dec
larations as he has here solemnly put on rec
ord could have no other effect than to rouse
sentiment Of Indignation throughout the Nor
thern States and renew and increase that ag-
itation which all true patriots desire to see
forever quoted.
The Springfield Republican says:
But the great topic of the message, evil
IDENTIFY the most labored and carefully pre-
pared, and yet constituting the great weakness
and defect Of the document, is its partisan
and sectional argument and appeal on the
subject of slavery. AS leader in the Wash
ington Union it would have been in charac-
ter. In speech by Frank Pierce on the
stump in New Hampshire, it would have been
a very creditable effort on the wrong side
But in the message of the President Of the
United States to Congress, it is monstrous and
disgraccful. The president should have made
this gross bid for slavery support in letter,
and not in an annual message. Nor only in
the manner but the substance of this mere
partisan appeal, he lays himself open largely
tothe severest censure, and will get it."
The Boston Trauelicr says:
The Message is the most infamous docu-
ment that has ever issued from any of our
Presidents. From quarter to a third Of it
is occupied with false, malicious and SIAN
derous attack upon the PEG lc Of the North
rem States, who in the exercise of their right
of suffrage, have with the greatest unauimity,
condemned the coarse Of the Administration
in sanctioning the Repeal of the Restriction
Of 1920 against the extension Of Slavery
From beginning to end this part of the mes
sage is one mass of falsehood aud msrepre-
sentation--false in general and fal in de-
tail; even the language Of the Constitution
itself is garbled to suit the Presidents pur-
poses. For instance, take the following para
graph
"Ilke all other interests of the several States,
each State expressly stipulated for itself as for
each and all of its citizens, and every citizen of
each State became solemnly bound by his ale
glance to the Constitution, that any person held
to service or labor in one State escaping into
another, should not, in consequence Of any law
or regulation thereof, be dsch .rged from such
service or labor, but should be delivered up on
claim of the party to whom such service or la
Dor might be due, by Tie latcs Of his State"
Here the President follows the language of
thu Constitution until he reaches the word
L" DUE" and then he adds the words which
we have printed in itaLc, and which are not
in the Constitution, which do not belong to
it, and which essentially change its meaning.
This sworn defender of the Constitution
this glib prater about its obligations,--this
denouncer Of better men than himself for dis
regarding its teachngs,-thus deliberately
attempts to cheat the people by passing off
as Constitutional language what is not in the
Constitution.
And the document is full of Just such
fllsehoods and meannesses as this. Take for
another instance the paragraph in which the
President says that the Northern people have
Extensively engaged in the works of attemp-
ting to reform the domestic institutions Of the
South, which are beyond their control and
authority, While he says, the Southern
people have not 'presumed officially to inter.
NEEDLE with the social institutions OF the
Northern States"
IF there is anything well settled in our
history it is that the Southern people have for
many years, been guilty of systematic at
tempt to extend Slavery into free territory.
They have made thousand times more effort
and with a thousand times more success than
the North, -witness their success in buying
up our public men,-as Wendell Phillips
would say, grasping for Webster, and grub.
bling for a Douglas and Pierce.
| The President fatters himself too much
when he thinks that the Nebraska Bill marked
the final consummation and complete rec
ognition Of the principle that no portion of
the United States shall undertake though as
sumption of the powers of the general COVER
ment to dictate the social institutions of any
other portion IF he means by this that
there will be no further attempt to counterfeit
the efforts of himself and his slave-monger-
ing brethren to extend human bondage.
The condition of affairs in the House of
Representative should have taught him
lesson on the pont.-His doctrines and his
conduct, as President, have been CONDEMNED
by the people, and he ought to be made aware
of it forthwith by the action of the House.
r r COMMISSIONER Wa understand tLot