Cincinnati daily press. [volume] (Cincinnati [Ohio]) 1860-1862, 1860-12-01

upon our own people.
Every Northern man knows that these
charges against the mass Of the Northern
people are utterly false. They are made for
a base partizan purpose, and known to be
false by those who make them. Such is the
degradation of politics that in ordinary times
these accusations are only looked upon as
party tactics, and excusable strstsgem; but,
now that the alarm which they have created
in the South has intensified sectional hostil-
ity until it has brought widespread disaster
upon the business of the country, and
threatens the existence of the nation, their
reasonable and incendiary character and
purpose begin to be realized, and should re-
ceive merited condemnation by the people
whoare suffering from them. And now when
every person in the community is, to some
extent, suffering or apprehending the con-
sequences of this incendiary course the
whole aim of these party journals is to find
material to increase the hostility of the
South against our own citizens. For this
purpose they seize upon the perssnal-lib-
erty laws of the. Northern States, and dis
play them to the South as Northern nulkfi-
cation, in order to justify and instigate
Southern secession; and they pretend that
the Fugitive-slave Law is nullifed in the
North. In their anxiety to enlarge these
compilations, every law for the protection
of free men is stigmatized as notification,
and even law of Ohio imposing disabilities
upon persons having any visible admix-
ture of negro blood, has been included in
these nullifying laws.
They endeayor to persuade the South that
every slave who escapes is lost through the
Northern notification of the Fugitive-slave
Law. Every Northern man knows that this
is all false. No State law in the North is
executed with such certainty as the Fugitive
slave Law; and where resistance has oc-
CURED, it has invariablyIbeen punished with
greater severity than would be used in case
Of resistance to any other law.
Every man of common sense knows that
the Fugitive-slave Law can not be nullified
by any State law. If any law conflicts with
it, the Federal Courts will declare it null and
void. This disposes of the whole charge of
notification, which Northern journals are
making to aggravate the South. No such
thing exists, nor can exist
The execution of the Fugitive-slave Law
does not depend on any State officers nor
can it be prevented by any State laws.
Most of the statutes which are arraigned do
not intend any hindrance, but are merely
for the protection of free men, a thing quite
as necessary in the border States of the
North, as laws to punish the stealing of
slaves are in the South.
All the disasters which the country is
now suffering have been brought upon it by
criminal falsehood, for nothing but partisan
purposes. All the sectional hostility has
been created by the treachery of Northern
politicians and journals to their own people.
We state this with the certainty that no
Northern man will seriously undertake to
controvert it. All that has ever been neces-
sary to preserve the amicable relations of
the different sectionsi and all that is now
requisite to restore them, and establish union,
peace, and prosperity, and make Northern
men, of every political party, as safe in the
| South as Southern men are among us, is
that the mass of the Southern people should
know the true sentiments of the North.
There is nothing in incendiarism as de-
fined by our statutes, nor as applied to the
domestic relations of the South, nor in trea-
son, as hitherto defined, that begins to com
pare with the crimnality of those who, hav-
ing the control of public journals, and assum-
ing in any capacity to represent public senti-
ment in the North use their position at this
time to misrepresent the people in order to
aggravate the troubles and danger of the
| country. ~
The Republican Party has a right to ba
judged by its own platform and acts. The
ideawas never before pretended that politi-
cal party should be held responsible for the
reckless charges of its opponents. AS for
ourselves, convinced as we are that there is
no practicable plan for the abolition OF slav-
cry, except in the undisturbed order oi
nature and of human progress, and not at all
asserting to the doctrine that state SOW
ereignty gives the majority the right to take
away the property rights of the minority,
but believing that property rights acquired
under the law, must be left to die out in
their natural course, we can be accused Of
no sympathy which should cause any doubt
of our justice when we declare that the
sentiments, political principles and intentions
of the Republican party have been utterly mis-
represented by the journals and Office holders
of the opposition. and solely for partizan pur-
poses. Nor does this Democratic misrepre-
sentation show the sentiment of the mass Of
that party, for among the people at large the
idea of any disloyalty of either party to law
and constitutional obligations is regarded aS
absurd. The times demand the truth, even
at the sacrifice of party policy. The safety
of the country and great material prosperity
have been sacrificed by falsehood and fraud
Every man among us feels the effects of it
The South ought to know that no party il
fit to be trusted in its friendship, which is
traitor to its own section; especially party
which within twelve years, in the State o
Ohio, has passed through all the stages 0
political Abolitionism.
The idea that the Republican party can b.
annihilated by falsehood, or by any distres
caused by falsehood, is simply and criminal!
absurd. 1t comprises more than tnoity o
the substantial wealth, intelligence and en-