Vermont watchman and State journal. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1836-1883, 1860-03-09

is almost tempted to exclaim, that We are dis
solving week by week and month by month";
that the threads are gradually frotting them
selves asunder and a stranger might suppose
that the Executive Of the United States was
the President of two hostile Republics. 1t is
not for me to raise a doubt upon the correct
ness Of this dark picture, far as the south
etn groups upon the canvas are concerned,
but must be indulged in the opinion that
can pronounce as accurately concerning the
northern or Republican representatives here
as any one. know their public haunts and
their private ways We are not hostile Re-
public. or representatives of one. We confer
together, but only as the organs of every par
ty do, and must do in political system which
obliges us to act sometimes as partisans while
It requires us always to be patriots and states
men. Differences Of opinion, even on the
subject Of slavery, with us are political, not
social or personal differences. There is not
one disunionist or disloyalist among us all
/ We are altogether unconscious of any process
/ OF dissolution going on among us or around
I us. We have never been more patient, and
never loved the representatives of other Sec
/ tions more, than now. We bear the same
testimony for the people around us here,who
though in the very centre where the bolt OF
disunon must fall first and be most fearful in
its effects seem never less disturbed than
now. We bear the same testimony for all
| the districts and States we represent The
people of the North are not enemies but
l friends and brethren of the South, faithful
and true as in the days when death has dealt
his arrows promscuousy among them on
common battle-feds of freedom.
We will not suffer ourselves here to dwell
on any evidences of different temper in the
i l.,s III l.. -. 81
ing our belief that hostility that is not de-
signodly provoked, and that cannot provoke
retaliation, is an anomaly that must be traced
to casual excitements, which cannot perpetu
ate alienation
THE PREsGDENTrAL ELECTION.
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 majority, while no party could cast more
THE HARrER's PERRY RAID.
than majority 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 were
peacefully, lawfully and constitutionally.
though zealously, conducting the great nation
al issue between free labor and capital labor
for the Territories to its popular solution,
through the trials of the ballot, operating di
rectly or indirectly on the various depart
ments of the Government, band of excep-
tional men, contemptuous equally of that
great question and of the parties to the con-
troversy, and impatient Of the constitutional
system which confines the citizens of every
State to political action by suffrage in organ
lied parties within their own borders, inspired
b, ,.acvltar 10 thor Nd
exasperated by grievances and wrongs that
some of them had suffered by inroads of arm
ed propagandsts of slavery in Kansas, unlaw-
full as their own retaliation was, attempted to
subvert slavery in Virginia by conspiracy,
ambush, invasion and force. The method we
have adopted, of appealing to the reason and
judgment of the people, to be pronounced by
suffrage, is the only one by which free gov
ernment can be maintained anywhere, and the
only one as yet devised which is in harmony
with the spirit of the Christian religion
While generous and charitable natures will
probably concede that John Brown and his
associates acted earnest though fatally err
roneous convictions yet all good citizens will
nevertheless agree, that this attempt to exc
cute an unlawful purpose in Virginia invasion,
involving servile war, act of sedition
and treason, and criminal in just the extent
that it affected the public peace and was de-
structiye of human happiness and human life.
ITS ACTORS.
1t is painful reflection that, after so long
an experience of the benefcent working Of
of our system as we have enjoyed, we have
had these new illustrations in Kansas and Vir-
ginia of the existence among us of 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 further
illustration by their punishment of that great
moral truth, especially applicable in Repub-
lie, that they who take up the sword as
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-all the more lamentable because
they were innocent victims of frenzy kin
died without their agency in far distart fires
the deaths even of the offenders themselves
pitiable, although necessary and just, because
they acted under delirium, which blinded their
judgment to the real nature Of their criminal
enterprise the alarm and CONSERVATION natu-
rally awakened throughout the country ex-
citing for the moment the fear that our whole
system, with all its securities for life and lib
erty, was coming to an end--a fear none the
more endurabe because continually aggravat-
cd by new ehmeras to which the great lead
ing event lent an air of probability surely all
these constituted a sum of public misery which
ought to have satisfied the most morbid ap-
petite for social horrors. But, as in the case
of the gun powder plot and the Salem witch
craft, and the New York colonial negro plot,
so now the original actors were swiftly fol-
lowed by another and kindred class, who
sought to prolong and widen the public dis
tress by attempting to direct the Indignation
which it had excited against parties guiltless
equally of completely and of sympathy with
the offenders.
Postcrity will decide in all the recent cases
whore political responsibility for public dis
astors must fall and posterity win give lit
tic heed to our instructions. 1t was not un-
I'll the gloomy reign Of Domitian had ended,
and liberty and virtue had found assured ref
ugc under the sway Of the milder Nerva, that
the historian arose whose narrative of that
period Of tyranny and terror has been accept
cd by mankind.
THE REPUBLICAN PARTY THE UNION PARTY.
The Republican party being thus vindicated
against the charge of hostility to the South,
which has been offered in excuse for the mem