Daily American organ. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1856, 1856-09-20
A sketch of John Siideil.

The ~ 0. Creole thus alludes to Hon. John Sill
dell, in connection with his recent letter to the
Democrac of Baton Rouge:
Mr.. Slidell is the fountain source of the corrup-
tons with which his party in Louisiana is eat
en- up. He inaugurated the system of fraud and
violence, of intrigue and bribery, which has result
ed in ballot-stuffing, in overriding the will of the
majority by Wholesale colonization of voters, and in
polluting the ballot-box with the thousands of
fraudulent votes The celebrated Plaquemine
frauds which will ever stand as a disgrace
to the virtue and intelligence of the Democracy of
Louisiana, is supposed, not without reason, to have
been coup de main planned by Senator Slidell.-
The voting upoE the papers of the victims of the
visitation of 1853, when three thousand fraudulent
ballots controlled the honest expression of the pop
ular will and aided to give him his present exalted
position in the Senate of the United States, was
the work of his teeming brain and his lavish e1-
penditure of money in the canvass. Does he re-
collect the eventful day when he entered the Dem
ocratic committee room, and, handing over several
thousand dollars declared the election must be
carried at all hazardsY
There is no city in the Union, not even except
ing San Francisco, where more wrong has been
perpetrated upon the people, where more outrages
have been consummated upon the freedom and
purity of the ballot-box, than in New Orleans; and
they have been the product of Democratic man.
the vivifyng spirit.
To redress these wrongs-to restore purity to
the ballot-box-to enable American citizens to
vote without exposure to insolence, to rufianism,
to blows-to destroy the power of prohigate politi
clans to parcel out the spos and use the people as
plant tools of their ambition and their avarice-
the American party sprang into being
That evils existed, which were intolerable, is
proved by the suddenness with which it acquired
power-the extent of its naturalization of the
Democracy, and the unanimity with which the
popular voice has pronounced and repronounced
the verdict of condemnation upon the leaders and
intrigues of past years For Senator Sidell, i'm
plcated as he is with all the political wrongs of
the pastthe prostitution of the right of suffrage,
the balot-box stuf6ng at Plaquemine, the violence
of the Old Bloody Seventh Ward, the voting of
the dead Metarie Ridge delegation rebuke the
American party, and to urge the Democracy to
preserve the purity of the suffrsge-is the assump
ton of character in striking contrast with all that
has been observed of him in Louisiana for a long
series of years.
Before he comes forward to impeach others, he
should have been careful that he was free from
blemish or reproach himself If he venture to
discourse upon the freedom of the ballot he must
have care that it is not patent to the community
that he has no respect for the rights Of others If
they stand in the way of his ambition. When
scenes of violence and fraud are his themes he
should see to it, that be not liable to the charge
of violating the hottest of rights to secure tho
handling OF $50, 900 he had bet upon the election
of Polk, or of defeating even the candidates Of
his own party in 1853, who were not favorable
to his election to the Senatorshp. In his new
character, he resembles Satyr playing the part Of
Hyperion.