Raftsman's journal. [volume] (Clearfield, Pa.) 1854-1948, 1859-07-27
DEMOCRATIC DECLIyITY

- UN'S iiAi4S ~ tiiO vi dlTedUy
revived slave-trade, have superfciaIly scan
ned the past history and present position of
| that party. Those measures may not be in
corporated In express terms into its creed at
the Charleston Convention. Though Rhett,
Wise, Brown, Fitzpatrick, and the men of
that school, backed by influential journals like
The Charleston Mercury, Richmond Enquirer,
Mtssissippian, and Montgomery (Ala.) .Adrer-
tiser, demand it on pain Of a bolt in the Con-
vention or at the polls, we question whether
! these issues will be set forth in the platform
| in unequivocal words. The South prefers not
TO disclose her programme till she is able to
execute it. She desires that Conventions
should, by their protocols, ratify the victories
she has already won ,while by the nominations,
they place at her disposal plant leaders whom
she can use in achieving new triumphs.
She conquers not by fighting in the open field,
but rather by subtle strategy. Though she
makes some use Of all her partizans, yet, in
the exigencies of a doubtful campaign, she
relies more upon the cool Hunter than the fiery
| Wise, the willy Slidell than the blatant Brown,
the practical Breckinridge than the metaphys-
ical Rhett.
Let us Illustrate our views by citing facts
in the history of the Democracy-facts so
commonplace that the lesson they teach is
| lost upon the public mind. Since the advent
of Jackson, the Southern wing of the party,
though in a numerical minority. has given the
law to its Northern allies, debating the poll
cy to be pursued, and designating the men
| whom they might exalt and those whom they
| must prescribe. Texas annexation, the Com
promise measures of 1850, the Kansas Nebras-
ka bill, the Lecompton swindle, the repudia.
ton of Van Buren in 1874, the crushing of
Wright in 1856, and the election of Pierce
and Buchanan, may be cited as proofs of this
position.
While it is unquestionable, therefore, that
the entire party has been ruled by the mem
bers dwelling in one section of the Union, and
those a minority of the whole, it is equally
true that that minority has of late years been
controlled by small moiety of its members.
The radical and revolutionary portion of the
Southern Democracy have, for twenty years,
dictated the measures of the party beyond the
Potomac. Their central idea has been the
supremacy OF Slavery in the Federal Gov
ernment, and its spread, more or less densely,
over all the States andTerritories of theUnion
The founder, the apostle, and finally the mar
tyr, Of the Negro Propaganda, was Mr.. Cal
houn. He originated the doctrine of the in
volatility of slave property, and the incom-
potency of Government to do aught to it ex-
cept protect it. All the new ideas respecting
Slavery, which have startled even the slumber-
ing Conservatism of our day, emanatcd from
his fertile brain. All the assaults upon the
old-fashioned principles of Freedom which
have marked our time were planned by the
same bold mind. His doctrines and his dis
ciples now control the Southern wing of the
Democratic party, and that wing gives the
law to its II orthern allies.
This school of politicians have set their
hearts upon catching negroes in Africa and
planting them in the Territories under the
sanction of Congress. The absence of entire
the seeming general repugnance of the party
in the North to these twin iniquities, only
proves that they are encountering precisely
the same obstacles in their march to success
which all the other measures of the Slave
Power have met. Favored at the outset only
by minority of the party at the South, each
of these measures ultimately secured major
ity. there, and then its acceptance by the
Northern Democracy was made certain
Though Texas annexation was ripening to
eonsummation as early as 1910, no Southern
member dared to propose, and no Northern
member would have dared to approve in the
National Democratic Convention of that year,
a resolution fayoring annexation. Yet, four
years afterward, the fruit was garnered by a
Democratic Congress. At the-Convention of
1913, the South did not venture to offer, nor
would the North have ratified, proposition
to repudiate the Dane-J Jeffersonian doctrine of /
the power and duty of Congress to prohibit |
Slavery in the Territories. Yet, within two
years from that day Democratic Senate and |
a closely balanced House, discarded that poll
cy in the organization of New Mexico and
Utah. Had the attempt been made to incor-
porate into the platform of 1852 the doctrine
of the unconstitutionality of such prohibit
ton, it would have been successfully resisted
by the convention that nominated Pierce
Yet the first Congress of his Administration
it upon the legislation of the coun-
try. So, too, of the Dred Scott pronuncia-
miento, and its logical corollary, the Lecomp-
ton English juggle; they could not have been
sanctioned by the Cincinnati Convention or
IL they had been, its nominee would have
peen secuted from the polls in every Free
State.
These historic data show that the Slave
over advances toward universal dominion by
slow, sure and stealthy steps that, when it