Watertown republican. [volume] (Watertown, Wis.) 1860-1906, 1860-08-31
Mr. Douglas ON his Canvass.
From the New York Independent.

From the New York Independent
The reader of the daily journals will
have been struck with the poverty of ideas
and the wealth of assurance evineed by the
least of all giants on his stumping tour.
That candidate must weigh well his words,
and be sure that he is not led away by the
heat of his Imagination to say what will of
fend some portion of his supporters, not
for speaking poorly, but, for declining to
speak at all. But when Mr. Douglas, the
Paganini of politicians, harps from day to
day on the thrcadbare string of ''Popu-
lar Sovereignty" deducing therefrom the
right of some men to hold others to a life
long bondage and, asking, "Why should
the crossing of q river (from State into
Territory divest American citizens of
rights Of self-government. which no one
ever denied them before?" he provokes the
crushing answer, ." You Mr. Douglas! are
the very man who should answer this ques-
ton You insert in your Kansas Nebras-
ka bill after stating that it was intended
to leave the Territories perfectly free to
have slavery or not, the condition subject
only to the Constitution of the United
States, which were in one sense sheer sur
plusage, but In another aspect were plainly
calculated to suggest that the doubt of the
right of the people of Territory to exclude
slavery, which has since broadened into an
absolute denial of that right. You thus
opened and held open a door through which
the slaveholding majority of the Supreme
Court might walk in and render Popular
Sovereignty in the Territories swindiing
mockery; and the fact that they might
have broken in at any rate does not excuse
you since you are seen to have expected
and invited the incursion You ignored
Popular Sovereignty when you voted
(March 2, ls54) against Mr.. Chase's
amendment expressly affirming the right
of the people of the Territories Of Kansas
and Nebraska to prohibit Slavery therein
and when on that same day you voted
against Mr.. Chase's fur her amendment
that the people of those Territories should
elect their own Governor What is the
reason, Mr.. Douglas that an American
citizen who is undoubtedly competent to
vote for Governor on one side of the riv-
er becomes incompetent to discharge that
duty Immediately on passing that river !?
Yet you and all your band stand recorded
as voting against Mr.. Chase's proposition,
while Hamlin and Seward, Sumner and
Wade and all who are now classed as Re
publicaDs, supported it? Where was Pop
ular Sovereignty then You may say
that the right of the People of Territory
to prohibits slavery is subject to the judi
cial sanction.or denial but who can say this
of the right of such people to choose their
own Governor, should Congress see fit to
concede it.
Time would hardly suffice to track Mr..
Douglas through his long career of sub
serviency to the shareholders in their
struggle to plant their ''institution" on
the soil of Kansas, yet one general view
must not be omitted. On the assembling
of the XXXIVth Congress, Dee. 1855, two
opposing claimants for a seat as Delegate
from Kansas appeared at the bar of the
| House, while Senators and a Representa-
tive from the embryo State of that name
| besieged the halls of both branches. Mr.
Reeder, whom President Pierce had ap-
pointed Governor, had returned accredited
as Delegate, and as Senator also whenever
Kansas should be admitted into the fami-
ly of States He and his associates
brought tidings of unprecedented outrage
and wrong-of a Legislature wrested from
the hands Of the people IN whose name
and behalf it was to act, constituted by
conspiracy, invasion force and fraud, in
the interest of their deadliest enemies-of
all the forms of republican sway prostitu-
ted to the ends of subjugation and oppres-
sion-of free citizens murdered, families
hunted from their homes by night into the
bleak prairie and compelled thence to look
ON the devastation of all their possessions
of Federal Governor removed for SYM
pathizing with the People rather than their
invading oppressors - of Federal power
welded to the uttermost against the de-
fenseless settlers, and in favor of the ma
rauding, desolating usurpers and invaders.
Never before or since was there so fla
grant and formidable a case Of villainy and
rapine cloaking itself under the forms of
government and law--of wickedness ram
pant and insolent-of robbers and assas-
sins calling on the government to chastise
peaceable citizens as rebels and outlaws
Of this gigantic atrocity, this organized
crime, there was no mere unscrupulous, no
more untiring upholder than Stephen A.
Douglas, then an ager candidate for the
pending Democratic Presidential nomina-
ton at Cincinnati For six long months
he missed no opportunity to malign the
free settlers, who then as now composed a
large majority of the people of Kansas,
and to pettifog, with all the blended inge-
nuity and audaoity of his nature, the cause
of the usurping, ravaging Border Rufians.
He sinned in the face of the clearest light
for not only were the facts plain on the
face of the matter as it unfolded itself
from day to day, but Recder, and Parrott,
and Delany. and Roberts, Gall lifelong
Democrats were at hand, pouring into
his cars the prayers and entreaties of
down-trampled, long suffering people.
Yet Stephen A. Douglas fought them day
by day, month after month-fought them
by reports, by speeches, by votes-fought
them by scornfully rejecting their prayer
to be admitted as a state, and thus enabled
to govern and defend fought
them by using all bis influence to keep
Gov. Reeder off his seat as Delegate, aud
keep this Missouri usurper, Whitfield, in it
fought them through bis servtors in the
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