Pomeroy weekly telegraph. [volume] (Pomeroy, Meigs County, Ohio) 1860-1866, 1860-08-14
FOOD FOR REFLECTION.

spectacle of a man taking an indepen-
dent stand for the right against power
and patronage. And the appearance of
such position is all that has given
Douglas the slightest hold upon the
popular mind. If his quarrel with the
party had been upon principle, and he
had consistently maintained a manly
position, he would have won the respect
of honest men, and, in the end, would have
met the reward of his fidelity. But it isso
apparent that the quarrel is but a per-
sonal one, and that the whole course of
the Senator has been prompted by an
inordinate ambition to be President,
that all confidence has been lost in his
integrity. It is true that many honest
people, deceived by the cunning devices
resorted to to hide the real purpose of the
aspirant. still think him honest and indie
pendent. And the unprincipled leaders
who surround him, hope to obtain the
votes of the people on false pretenses,
that they may reap the spoils.
No man in the Union has ever bowed
so low to the slave power Of the South as
Stephen A. Douglas. No other man
has ever done so much to secure the
votes of the shareholders as he. The
repeal of the Missouri Compromise was
bid which no other Northera man
would make for Southern support
Douglas made that bid, and supposed he
had thereby secured the friendship
of the whole slave interest. But in Sc
curing this interest he necessarily out
ragged the moral sentiments, as well as
the common instincts, of the free labor
ers of the North. And the South alone
could not make him President. He
must, therefore, retain a majority in his
own State, and one or two others, or his
subserviency to the slave power would be
Of no avail. In this emergency, the
cunning dodge of Popular Sovereignty"
was invented. Supposing he had the
South secure, by the sacrilegious act of
opening up the Territories to the, curse
of slavery, he applies all the resources Of
his cunning and audacity to make his
followers in the North believe that they
could still cheat the South out Of the
boon he promised them, by unfriendly
legislation One side or the other was
to be cheated But Douglas hoped to
get the votes of both by his double
faced policy, pretending to be the special
friend of each.
The Republicans, at an expense ofmil-
lions of dollars, the sacrifice of many
lives, and enduring the abuse and insults
of Douglas and his partisans for years,
at last beat off the slave propagandists
from the plains Of Kansas and made it
Free State. While they were doing this,
Douglas was denouncing them as trait
ors and rebels-as freedom-shriekers
and outlaws. But when he. failed to
crush the Republicans, he had the au-
dacity to Insult the intelligence of man
kind, by pointing his Northern dupes
to Kansas, and to say, "see! / told you
that the repeal of the Compromise would
make Kansas free But while the
Republicans, at such sacrifice, and in
spite of the Democratic party, saved
Kansas from the blighting curse, the
agents of that same party, the officials of
a Democratic Administration, succeeded
in foisting it upon New Mexico and
Arizona by the most outrageous slave
co lie which ever disgraced a people. And
here was field congenial to the genius
of Douglass scene for the display of
that cunning which unprincipled men
rely upon. instead of principle. And
hence we find him rising in the Senate,
having as he supposed completely duped
the North by his theory of "unfriendly
legislation" and in an abject appeal to
the South, who had called him to ac-
count for his Northern speeches, says:
"Under this doctrine, aoe haue concerted
a tract Of free territory into szdce territory
more than five times the size Of the State
of Nc,o York. Under this doctrine
Slavery has been ertcnded from the