The Grand Haven news. [volume] (Grand Haven, Mich.) 1858-18??, 1859-08-31
No Abandonment of the Doctrine.

ginia started out few months ago with
the fantasy that slavery is entitled to be
protected by Congressional legislation in
all the Territories, and that the next de-
mocratic national convention must affirm
this doctrine Of protection. The demand
of the eccentric gentleman was nothing
less than that the democratic party
should repudiatc its past and settled
doctrine of non-ntervention by Con-
gress with slavery in State and Territory
or in the District of Columbia" and set
up the contrary and hostile doctrine, in
reference by Congress with slavery in
the Territories. He insisted on nothing
less than that the question of slavery,
which the democratic party has been ex-
erting itself to Danish from the arena of
Congress, should be brought back to
that arena by the action of the demo
cratic party, and the whole subject
thrown open to renewed agitation. The
purpose of Governor WISE was purely
selfish. He was Presidential aspirant,
and he thought to raise and force the
adoption of this issue in the South, and
to himself mount the topmost wave of
the storm which he had excited and be
borne upon it-into the Presidential
chair, leaving all other southern states
men far in the rear in attitudes of wonder
at what they beheld. We think the
Governors Presidential visions have re-
Gently been dissipated. However splen-
didly, in his own conceit, he was leading
all competitors in the race, a sad accident
an unlucky miscarriago-an inoppol-
tune expose-has placed him horS de
combat amidst the laughter of the whole
country. So, little moro may be said of
the eccentric Governor. Few in the
South embraced his doctsino of Congress
ional interference with slavery in the Ter
ritories except the opposition. If it was
embraced by persons protesting to belong
to the democratic party, they were zeal
OTIS and extremists, who arc as noisy as
they are few, and who never have repre-
sented and never will represent the pro-
vailing popular sentiment of the South on
South very generally did embrace this
doctrine. In Kentucky, as our readers
know, they made it direct issue with
the democracy, who stood firmly upon
the true democratic platform and triumph
ed If the doctrine can be considered n
party doctrine at all, it is southern OPP
position doctrine.
But the northern black republican
newspapers, in the face of this state of
facts, have industriously attempted to
create the impression that the whole
southern democracy were were declaring
for a slave-code for the Territories, and
that their delegates at Charleston would
insist, with Governor WISE, that the con-
vention should resolve in favor of such
slave code; and these newspapers have
been free to predict that the north
ern democracy would yield. The at
tempt TO create this impression has
proved completely abortivc,-so abortive,
indeed, that some of the same newspa-
pers, ashamed TO repeat the story, have
halfconfessed that there is no truth in it.
One of these is the New York Evening
Post, which says:
at is for this reason, doubtless, that the idea
of modifying the platform of the so-callcd dem
ocratic party, by inserting tho new tenet Of
slave code for the Territories, has been given
up. To insert il would be TO invite defcat, and
coed in the next election if they can. They can
not afferd to set at defiance the entire North,
both friends and enemies There is every indi-
cation, therefore, that, having felt the pulse of
the North sufficiently by the discussion which
has already taken place, they will drop tho de-
mand for legislative protection Of slavery in tho
Territories for the present. What they may do
If they should succeed in electing President
of the United States-what they may do if they
should find themselves hereafter possessed of a
mojority of votes in the two houses of Congress,
Is another question. For the present this pro-
ject Of slave code for the Territories, enacted
by Congress, is laid aside"
That will do very we'll for beginning.
Perhaps the Post will confess the whole
truth by-and-by; and if it should on any
occasion find itsefin that mood, lot it tell
its readers that the democratic party has
never thought of abandoning, and never
will abandon, its doctrine of Congression-
al non-intervention with slavery in the
Territories-that it will never consent
that Congress shall legisislato with re-
gard to the domestic concerns of the Ter
ritories-that it will insist that the peo- |
pie of the Territories shall form and repu- |