Nashville daily patriot. [volume] (Nashville, Tenn.) 1855-1857, 1856-09-08
70 lhe People Of the United states.

freely to communicate some Of our apprehensions,
before we separate here, and to call upon you at
once 10 look full in the face any dangers which may
seem to impend over the greatest popular govern
nent on earth.
Two Of the political parties in the country have
pitched Presidential battle upon sectional issues.
and OF so fearful character to stir the deepest
passions of the American people. Though in
seeming conflict il cannot be disguised, that those
parties have in such sort co operated as to press
upon the country one exciting issue after another
until by dint of continued evaporation, they have
nearly succeeded in arraying. in hostile columns,
oue-half OF the States of the Union against the 9TH
er. They appear mutually to have employed all
the energies of party power to engender sectional
distrust, prejudice, and elimination, and DOW, for
the first time in the history OF the government we
find truly formidable party, fully organized, and
using every effort in their power to combine the
non .slaveholding against the savehoding States of
the Union, in a struggle for the Executive power
Of the Confederacy. In that organization are inS
Guided men who are supposed to be conservative
aud national but who are believed TO be led by
element or misconception, into movements which,
in their cooler moments, they cannot but recoil
from, as they would from pestience and famine.
It's management has been essentially controlled
by leaders who, under all circumstances have stead
lily kept up an active, unceasng, and implacable
Tsrfare upon the institutions OF the slavehOding
States. Should such party unfortunately succeed,
in the present distracted state OF the public mind,
in electing sectional President, supported alone
by the voters of the non-slavehOlding States, we
have too much to apprehend that there might
instantly spring into existence movement of re-
sistance, the consequences of which no human wis
dom can forsee, and no lover of his country or
friend of popular government anywhere could fail,
in all coming time, sadly to deplore.
We do not believe they can succeed, but we may
be really threading upon the brink of volcano,
that is liable, at any moment, TO burst forth and
overwhe m the nation"
But the Republican party is not alone RESPONSE
bic for those appalling issues, nor is its success the
only danger to the stability of the Government in
its present form. The Democratic party has ca
gerly seized upon these momentous issues, and
welded them as the thunderbolts of party warfare
They have striven to madden the South, and to
concentrate Southern votes upon their candidates,
as the AbolitiOnists have striven to madden the
North and to concentrate Northern votes upon their
candidates.
When their extreme measures are resisted they
taunt national men, in the South, as Submission
lists" or worse than submissonists, as the Abolition
lists taunt national men in the North as dough
faces" or worse than dough faces.
They have apparently struggled to bring about
the formation of geographical parties, such as the
against, based upon questions Immediately tending
to split the Union asunder; and they have SEEM
ingy done this for the petty purpose of securing
temporary party triumph. The Union, in form at
least, think, would survive the success Of such
a party for the present; but its triumph would
probably keep the furnaces of sectional passion red
hot, and ultimately, and it may be at no distant
day, its rash errors would engender storm of secs
tional conflict beneath which the government
IL. 4 Il.
fail
But we believe the time has come when the com
safety requires that the raging sectional heats
of those parties should be cooled. The time has
come when national conservative men, respecting
the Constitution, true to their whole country, and
indignantly frowning upon the first dawning of
disunion," should stand shoulder to shoulder, and
unite in placing at the head of the government a
Chief Magistrate in whose capacity, honesty and
patriotism all could confide. The National Ameri-
can party have now presented such a man-One
who has been tried and found faithful to every
trust-who, being suddenly Gale upon to take
the helm Of government at a time when the
Heavens were lurid with the angry tempest of
1880, so successfully rode out that storm, SO
faithfully and calamity secured the safety of the
noble ship of State, as to win from an admiring
people the most heartfelt plaudits, "Wel done
thou good and faithful servant"
We point you to another fearful cancer on the
body poltic--the humilatibg struggle now going
on between the Democratic and Republican par
ties for the foreign UOte and to the tremulous ap.
prehensions expressed for the fate of the one or
the other of those parties as the uncertain move
ments of the Germans or Irish oscillate between
them. We warn you that the fate of this great
government may soon be equally dependent upon
the unstable movements Of those mighty masses
fresh from the monarchies of Europe. Large por-
tions Of our Union already Overlooking with
a foreign populations population such as has
shown itself utterly incapable OF sustaining popus
lar governments in the Old World So immense is
now the influx that we can scarcely be regarded as
the same, or the descendants of the same people
We were twenty years ago Where, and in what,
is this to end? WILLARD FILLMORE alone of the
candidates for the Presidency has refused to court
this gigantic and growing element of power
While he has no hostility TO foreigners, he frankly
warns his countrymen that iL is safer for American
born citizens to rule the destinies Of America
Having witnessed their deporable condition in their
own fatherands, he would share with them all the
privileges and blessings of ours, save the single
privilege of Selling the reigLs OF government aud
overturning the car of State, in which we are all
passengers. We beseech you to see the dangers
we have briefly glanced at, and to shun them, be.
fore it is too late forever!
W urge you 10 uillJe WIN US IN support oil the
patriot statesman who has always fearessly out.
spoken his sentiments-who has ever made the
constitution bis guiding star-who has risen from
an apprentice hoy to the Presideucy-who, when
President, lrowned upon disorganizers and radicals
North and South and, with the aid of conservative
Wings and Democrats, bravely restored peace 70
distracted countrywide has just said "lf there be
those either North or South, who desire an admin
isration for the North against the South, or for
the South as against the North, they are not the
men who should give their suffrages to me-"
Fom the moment Mr.. Fillmore was first placed
in nomination, every effort has been resorted to to
induce the country to believe, first that he would
not accept the nomination; secondly, that he had
no strength at the North, and could not. carry a
single Northern State, even his own; thirdly, that
he had no strength at the South, and could NOT
carry single Southern State; fourthly, that he was
so Southern in his feelings and views, that the
North ought not TO support him, and would not;
and, filthy, that he was an A6ol,tionist and could
not and ought not to be supported by the South
In regard 10 the charges against Mr.. Fillmore
which related to his views and opinions Of public
policy, his friends have deemed IL best to permit
them TO be refuted as they have been most amply
and tFiumphanty, by the record Of his noble admin.
istraton; by bis own bold, frank, and manly speech
es, which the people have everywhere read with
admiration and delight, aud by his pure, unsul-
lied reputation and spotIess character. OF these
the people themselves had the means Of forming an
accurate judgment, and TO that judgment both he
and his friends have been at all times and are now
ready to bow with respectful submisson-they ask
no appeal to any other tribunal
But the arts and falsehoods which have been re-
sorted by the two sectional parties Of the eoun,
try to weaken Mr.. Fillmore, by inducing the belief
that he without strength elsewhere than in the
place where the falsehOod was told, the people have
not been 20 well able to understand. They have
heard these assertions generally with surprise and
incredibly, though the frequency Of their repeti.
ton, the confident tone in which they were asserted
the variety Of forms ia which they have been made
TO appear, aud, above oil, the perfect concurrence
Of Rrunhlicans and Democrais in these misrepre-