The Cass County Republican. [volume] (Dowagiac, Mich.) 18??-1880, 1860-03-15

dent Of two hostile Republics. IL Is
not for me to raise doubt upon the
correctness of this dark picture, SO Tar
as the Southern groups upon 'ne can
vass are concerned, but l 'naSt DC III
Obliged in the opinion that can pro
nosnce as accurately concerning the
Nor,bern or Republican representa-
tics here as any one. ] know their
nublic haunts and their private ways.
I'VE are not hostile Republic, or rep
resentatives of one. We confer to-
gether, but only rs the organs of every
party do, and must do in political sys-
tenn which otliges us to act sometimes
as partisans, while it requires us al
ways to be patriots and statesmen.
Differences of opinion, even on the
subject of Slavery, with us are politi-
cal, not social, or personal differences.
There is not one disuniouist or disloy-
alist among us all. We are altogether
unconscious of any process of dissolu-
ton going on among or around us.
We have never been more patient, and
never loved the representatives of 9th
err Sc, tions more than now. We bear
the same testimony for the people
around us .here, who, though in the
very center where the bolt of disunion
must fall first and be most fearful IA its
effects, seem never less disturbed than
now. We bear the same testimony for
all the districts and States we repre-
sent. The people Of the North are
not enemies, but friends and brethren
of the Sonth, faithful and true as in the
days when death has dealt his arrows
promiscuously among them on COM
mon battle fields of Freedom.
We will not suffer ourselves here to
dwell on any evidence of a different
temper in the South but we shall be
content with expressing our belief
that hostility that is not designedly
provoked, and that cannot provoke re-
taliation, is an anomaly that must he
traced to casual excitements, which
cannot perpetnate alienation.
A canvas for Presidential election,
i'm some respects more important. per-
haps. than any since 1900. has recently
begun. The House of Representatives
was to be organized by n majority,
while no party could cast more than a
plurality of votes. The gloom of the
late tragedy in Virginia rested on the
Capitol from the day when Congress
assembled. While the two great po-
litical parties were peacefully, lawfully,
and constitutionally, though zealonsly,
conducting the great national issue be-
tween free labor and capital labor for
the Territories to its proper solution,
through the trials of the ballot opening
directly or indirectly on the various de-
partments of the Government, a band
of exceptional men, contemptuous
equally of that great question and of
the parties to the controversy and inn
patient of the constitutional system
which confines the citizens of every
State to political action by suffrage in
organized parties within their own bor-
ders, inspired by an enthusiasm pecn-
liar to themselves, and eXasperated by
grievances and wrongs that some of
them had suffered by inroads of armed
propagandists of Slavery in Kansrs,
unlawful as their own retaliation was,
attempted to subvert Slavery in Vir-
ginia by conspiracy, ambush, invasion,
aud force. The method we have
adopted, of appealing to the reason
and judgement of the people. to be
pronounced by suffrage, is the only one
by which free government can be-main-
tanned anywhere, and the only one MS
vet devised which is in harmony with
the spirit of Christian religion. While
generous and charitable natures will
probably conce,le that John Brown
aud his associates acted on earnest
though fatally erroneous convictions,
yet all good citizens will nevertheless
agree that this attempt to execute an
unlawful purpose in Virginia by inva-
sion, involving servile war, was an act
of sedition and treason, and criminal
tn Just the extent that it affected the
public peace, and was destructive OF
human happiness aud human life.
III is apainfnl reflection that, after
80 long an experience of the benificent
working of our system rs we have en-.
ioyed, we have had these new illustra.
lions in Kansas and Virginia of the
existence among us of a class of men
80 misguided and SO desperate as to
seek to enforce their peculiar principles
by the sword, drawing after it need
for the further illustration by their pun
ishInent of that great moral trnth, es
pecially applicable in republic, that
they who take mp the sword rs weap
on of controversy shall perish 10y the
sword. In the latter case the lamented
deaths of SO many citizens slain from
an ambush and by surprise-all the
more lamentable because they were in
nocent victims of frenzy kindled
without their agency, in far distant fires
the deaths even of the offender,
themselves, pitiable, although necessar,
and Just, because they acted under de
lirium, which blinded their judgment.
to the real motive of their criminal en-
IterpriSe the alarm and consierua,iol
naturally awakened throughout the
country, excitin. for the moment the
fear that our whole system, with all its
securities for life and liberty, was com
ing To an end--a fear none the more
endnrable because continually agra
waited by new chineras to which the
great leading event lent ~, air of prob
ability surely nil of these constituted
Il sum of public misery which ough
to have satisfied the most morbid up
petite for social horrors But, as il
the case of the gun powder plot, ant
the Salem witchcrafi, and the New