Ashtabula weekly telegraph. [volume] (Ashtabula, Ohio) 1853-1873, 1860-03-17

A canvass for Presidential election, in
some respects more important, perhaps,
than any since 1900 has recently begun
The House Of Representatives was to be
organized by a majority, while no party
could cast more than 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
political parties we're peacefully lawfully,
and coustiIutionaly, though Sealously, con-
Quoting the great national issue between
free labor and capital labor for the Terri
ritories to its proper solution, through the
trials Of the ballot, operating directly or
indirectly on the various departments of
the Government, q band Of exceptional
men, eontemptuons equally of that great
question aud Of the parties to the contro
versy, aud impatient Of the constitutional |
system which confines the citizens of every |
State to political action by suffrage, in or
ganised parties within their own borders, !
inspired by an enthusiasm peculiar to them. |
selves and exssperated by grievances snd
wrongs that some of them had suffered by
inroads Of armed propagaudists of slavery
in Kansas, unlawful as their own retalia-
tion was, attempted to subvert slavery in
Virginia by conspiracy, ambush, invasion,
aud force. The method we have adopted,
Of appealing to the reason and Judgment
Of the people to be pronounced by Suffrage,
Is the only QUE by which free government
can be maintained anywhere, and the only
one as yet devised which is in harmony with
the spirit of the Christian religion. While
generous aud charitable natures will pro-
badly concede that John Brown and his
associates acted on earnest though fatally
erroneous convictions, yet all good citizens
viii nevertheless agree, that this attempt
to execute an unlawful purpose in Virginia
by invasion, involving seryle war, was an
act Of sediton and treason, and criminal
10 Just the extent that it affected the pub
lie peace and was destructive Of human
happiness and human life. 1t is painful
reflection that, after so long an experience
Of the benehcent working of cur system as
we have enjoyed, We have had these new
Illustrations in Kansas and Virginia of the
existence among us of q class of men so
misguided and so desperate as to seek to
enforce their peculiar principles by the
sword, drawing after it need for the fur
ther illustration by their punishment of
bic in Republic, that they who take up
the sword as a weapon Of controversy shall
perish by the sword. In the latter case,
the lamented deaths of so many citizens,
slain from an ambush and by surprise-al
the more lamentable because they were in
nocent victims of q frenzy kindled without
their agency, in far distant fres-the deaths
even of the offenders themselves, pitiable, |
although necessary and just, because they
acted nnder delirium, which blinded their |
judgments to the real nature Of their crimi-
nal enterprise the alarm and consierna-
tion naturally awakened throughout the
country, exciting, for the moment, the fear
that our whole system, with all its securi-
tics for life and liberty, was coming to an
end-a fear none the more endurable be-
cause continually aggravated by new CHI
meras to which the great leading event lent
an air of probability surely all these con-
stituted a sum of public misery, which
ought to have satisfied the most morbid APP
petite for social horrors. But, as in the
case of the gunpowder plot, and the Salem
wtchcraft, and the n ew York colonial ne
gro plot SO now the original actors were
swiftly followed by another and kindred
class, who sought to prolong and widen
the public distress by attempting to direct
the Indignation which it had excited against
parties gutless equally of completely and
of sympathy with the offenders.
Posterity will decide in all the recent ca
ses where political responsibility for public
disasters must fall and posterity will give
little heed to our instructions. 1t was not
until the gloomy reign of Domitian had |
ended, and liberty and virtue had found
assured refuge under the sway of the mild
er Nerva, that the historian arose whose !
narrative of that period of tyranny aud
terror has been accepted by mankind.
The Republican party being thus vindi-
Gated against the charge of hostility to
the South, which has been offered in excuse
for the menaces Of unconstitutional resist |
ance in the event Of its success, feel well |
assured that it will sustain me in meeting |
them in the spirit of tee defender of the |
English Commonwealth
"SureIy they that shall boast as we do to be
a free nation, and having the power, shall not
also have the courage to remove, constitution
ally, every Governor, whether he be the supreme
or subordinate may please their fancy with
ridiculous and painted freedom fit to coZen ba-
oiesi Dul uiti lbuttui uuucF l|EauDy Huu hSIfl- !
tude, as wanting that power which is the root
and source Of all liberty to dispose of aud econ
omize 10 the land which God hath given them,
as members Of family in their own home and
free inheritance. Without which natural and
essential power Of free nation, though bear
ing high their heads, they can, in due esteem,
be thought no better than slaves and vassals
born in the tenure and occupation of another
iDheriting lord, whose government, though not
Illegal or intolerabe, hangs on them as a lordly
seourge, not as free government"
The Republican party knows, as the
whole country will ultimately come to I'M
derstand, that the noblest objects of nation
al life must perish, if that life shall he lost,
and, therefore, it will accept the issue ten.
dered. 1t will take up the word Union,
which others are so willing to renounce, and
combining it with that other glorious
thought, Liberty, which has been its inspi
ration so long, it will move firmly onward,
with the motto inscribed on its banner,
''USIoS and LIBERTY, come what may, in
victory as In defeat, in power as out Of pow
eF now and for ever