Muscatine weekly journal. [volume] (Muscatine, Iowa) 185?-1890, 1860-03-16

sectional one. But is the Republican party
sectional? Not unless the Democratic party
is. The Republican party prevails in the
House of Representatives sometimes; the
Democratic party in the Senate always.
Which of the two IS the most proscriptive?
Come, if you will, into the Free States, into
the State of New York, anywhere from Lake
Erie to Sag Haroor, among my neighbors in
the Owasco Valley. Hold your conventions,
nominate your candidates, address the people,
submit to them, fully, earnestly, eloquently,
all your complaints and grievances of North
ern disloyalty, oppression, perfidy; keep
nothing back, speak just as freely and as
loudly there as you do here. You viii. nave
hospitable welcomes, and approaching audi
ences, with ballot-boxes open for all the votes
you can win. Are you less sectional than
this Extend to us the same privileges. and
[ will engage that you will very soon have in
the South as rnany Republicans as we have
Democrats in the North. There is, however,
better test of nationality than the accidental
location of parties. Our policy of labor in the
Territoriet was not sectional in the first forty
years of the Republic. Its nature inheres.
1t will be national again, dUring the third
forty years, and forever afterward. 1t is not
wise and benefcent for US alone, or injurious
to you alone. Its effects are equal, and the
same for US all. lF,....a
HAS THE REPUBLICAN, PARTY ANY ULTERIoR
DESIGNS?
You accuse the Republican party of Interior
and secret designs. How can party that
counts it's votes in this land of free speech and
free press by the hundreds Of thousands have
any secret designs? But what are these
hidden purposes? You name only one That
one is to introduce negro equality among you.
| We know, and we will show you, if you will
only give heed, that what our system of labor
works out, wherever it works out anything,
is the equality of white men. The laborer in
the Free States, no matter how humble his
occupation, is white man, and he IS polite
ally the equal of his employer. Eighteen Of
our thirty three States are Free Labor States.
There they are: Maine, New Hampshire
Massachusetts,, Vermont, Rhode Island, Con.
necticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsyl.
vania, Ohio Michigan, Illinois, Indiana
Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, California and
Oregon. | do not array them in contrast with
the capital States. am no assailant of States
All of the States are parcels of my OWL
Countrywide best Of them not so wise and
great as am sure it will hereafter be; the
State least developed and perfect ancng them
all is wiser and better than any foreign State
l know. Is it, then, in any, and in which, Of
the States have named, that negro equality
offends the white mans pride? Let the
European immigrant, who avoids the African
as if his skin exhaled contagion, answer You
find him always in the State where labor is
ever free. Did Washington, Jefferson an6
Henry, when they implored you to relinquisk
your system and accept the one we have
adopted, propose to sink you down to the
level of the African, or was it their desire tc
to eXalt all white men to common politica
elevation? But we do not seek to force, 81
even to intrude, our systom on you. We are
excluded Justly, wisely and contentediy from
all political power and responsibility in your
capital States. You are sovereigns on the
subject of Slavery within your own borders
as we are on the same subject within our
borders. 1t is we'll and wisely so arranged
Use your authority to maintain what system
you please. Each must be maintained in
order that the whole may be preserved. II
ours shall be assailed, within or without, by
any enemy, or for any cause, and VIC shall
have need, we shall expect you to defend it.
If yours shall be so assailed, in the emergency
no matter what the cause or the pretext, or
who the foe, we shall defend your sovereignty
as the equivalent of our own. We cannot
indeed, accept your system of capital or its
ethics. That would be to surrender and
subvert our own, which we esteem to be better
You complain that Republicans discourse too
boldly and directly when they express with
confidence their belief that the system of labor
will, in the end, be universally accepted by
the capital States. But surely you can hardly
expect the Federal Government or the political
parties of the nation to maintain censorship
of the press or Of debate. Will it be claimed
that more of moderation and tenderness in
debate are exhibited on your side of the great
argument than our own? We all learned cur
polemics, as we'll as cur principles, from a
common master ('rhos. JeiIerson). We are
sure that we do not, on our side, exceed his
lessons and example. | must be in,iulged in
the opinion that can pronounce as accurately
concerning the Northern or Republican repre-
sentatives here as any one. know their
public haunts and their private ways We
are not hostile Republic, or representatives
of one. We confer together, but only as the
organs of every party do, and must do In
political system which obliges US to act some
times as partsans, while it requires US always
|
opinion, even on the subject of Slavery, with
US are POLITICAL not social or personal differ
ences There is not one diSunionist or dis
loyalist among us all. We are altogether
unconscious Of any process of dissolution
going on among or around US. We have
| never been more patient, and never loved the
representatives of other sections, more than
now. We bear the same testimony for the
M hnrn -hn IL
very center where the bolt of disunlon must
fall first and he most fearful in it's 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 friends and brethren
of the South, faithful and true as in the DAYS
when death has dealt his arrows promiscu-
ously among them on common battle fields of
Freedom. -........
While the two great political parties were
peacefully, lawfully and constitutlonally,
though zealously, conducting the great |
national issue between free labor and capital
labor for the Territories to it's proper solution,
through the trials of the ballot, operating
directly or indirectly on the various depart.
ments of the Government, band of
exceptional men, contemptuous equally Of!
that great question and of the parties to tho
controversy, and impatient of the constitu-
tional system which confines the citizens Of
every State to political action by suffrage in
organized parties within their own borders
inspired by an enthusiasm peculiar to them
selves, and exasperated by grievances and
wrongs that some of them had suffered bv
inroads of armed propagandists of Slavery in
Kansas, unlawful as their own retaliation was
attempted to subvert Slavery in Virginia by
ambush, invasion and force
While generous and charitable natures will
probably concede that John Brown and his
associates acted on earnest though fatally
erroneous convictions, yet all good citizens
will nevertheless agree that this attempt to I.
execute an unlawful purpose in Virginia bv
INVASION, involving servile war, was an act Of