The national era. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1847-1860, 1859-03-31
WISE AHEAD.

The signal discontinue of Gov. Wise, in his
efforts to supplant Mr. Hunter as United States
Senator, was anything but favorable augury
of his Presidential prospects. But the despera-
ton of the Black Democracy, and the utter
hepelessness of the cause for 1860, with Lee
cOmptonite at their head, has gradually under
mined their pride, and prepared them to over
look Mr.. Wises past errors, for the sake of his
supposed availability" We have remarked
numerous signs of Mr.. Wise's improving pros
poets, which he owes entirely to his opposition
to the Lecompton fraud, concocted by his own
party friends. His star, for the present at least
is in the ascendant, and we shall not be sur
the party for the Presidency. The Southern
wing of the party demand that the South shall
have the next Presidential nomination, and Mr.
Wise is the only prominent Anti Lecomptonite
of the party south of Mason and Dixon's line.
Hence the necessity of forgiving his past &C.
centricity, since that eccentricity can alone
secure Southern President.
One would have supposed that the South
! could more easily forgive Northern ally such
as Mr.. Douglas, than one of its own citizens,
for any act manifesting lukewarm ness in the
cause of Slavery; but, for some reason, the H.
linois Senator has forfeited the confidence of
the slaveholding interest, while Mr. Wise is
forgiven, and placed at the head of the party.
This partial course is doubtless owing to the
fact that Mr.. Douglas, from the necessities of
his position in his late Senatorial campaign,
was compelled to revive and bring into promi-
nence his hobby of popular sovereignty"
which, since 1854, had been permitted to sleep.
This necessity of Mr.. Douglas has forced him
into antagonism with the Slavery Propaganda
lists, who we're perfectly willing to use the pop
ular sovereignty humbug for the repeal of the
Missouri Compromise; but now that Slavery
has been declared the law of the land for all
the Territories, they have no more use for Mr..
Douglass hobby.
Governor Wise, on the contrary, has been
forced by circumstances into the opposite ex-
IRENE. In order to mollify the Indignation of
his Southern friends, which was excited by his
opposition to the Leeompton Constitution, he
has been induced to put forth, through his or
gan, the Enquirer, the monstrous proposition
that Congress is under high moral obligation
to intervene, by positive legislation, for the pro-
lection of Slavery in the Territories. We be-
lieve that this proposition, the last and highest
assumption of the Slave interest, originally APP
peared in the Richmond Enquirer, of which a
son of Governor Wise is the editor. At any rate,
that paper has cordially adopted and insisted
upon the new dogma. NJ
Here, then, is the secret of Governor Wise's
present Southern popularity. The Black De-
mocracy could ask nothing more than he stands
pledged to and on this account they are will
ing to pardon his Anti Lecomptonism, believ-
ing that it viii render him the more available
as candidate.
Governor Wise has also strengthened him
self in the Gulf States by coquetting with the
slave-trade party. While his organ processes
to be opposed to the trade as measure OF pol
icy, it unhesitatingly declares in favor OF re-
pealing the Federal laws which forbid and pun
ish it. That journal assumes that the anti-slave-
trade laws are unconstitutional, and must there
fore be repealed; and it would remit to the
States the duty of admitting or excluding for
eign slaves By assuming these ultra Pro
Slavery positions, Governor Wise has completely
reinstated himself in the confidence of the