The weekly Ottumwa courier. [volume] (Ottumwa, Iowa) 1857-1872, 1860-03-29
OTTUMWA, IOWA, THURSDAY, MARCH 90, 1860.

that we repel you by some wrong principle
or practice. FIVE do repel you by any
wrong principle or practice, the fault is ours;
but this brings you TO where you ought to
have started-to discussion of the right or
wrong of our principle. If our principle, put
in practice, would wrong your section for the
benefit of ours, or for any other object, then
our principle, and we with it. are sectional,
and are justly opposed and denounced as
such. Meet US, then, on the question of
whether our principle, put in practice, would
wrong your section; and so meet ii as if it
were possible that something may be said on
our side. Do you accept the challenge? No !?
! Then you really believe that the principle
which our fathers who framed the Gov
ernment undet which we live. thought 80
clearly right as to ADOPT il, and indorse it
! again and again, upon their official oathS,
, is, in fact, so clearly wrong as to demand
/ your condemnation without moments con-
| sideration,
wAsTISGTON's FAREWELL ADDRESS.
| Some of you delight to flauHt in our faces
the warning against sectional parties given
/ by Washington in his farewell Address Less
than eight years before Washington gave
, that warning, he had, as President of the
/ United States, approved and signed an act of
Congress, enforcing the prohibition of slavery
! in the North Western Territory, which act
embodied the policy of the Government up
on that. subject, up to and at the very mo-
ment h penned that warning; and about
me year after he penned it he wrote La Fay
cite that he considered that prohibition a
vice measure, expressing in the same con-
nccton his hope that we should sometime
have a confederacy of free States. Bearing
this in mind and seeing that sectionalism has
since arisen upon this same subject, is that
warning weapon in your hands against us.
or in our hands against you? Could Wash
ington himself speak, would he cast the blame
! of that Sectionalism upon Us, who sustain his
policy, or upon You, who repudiate it? We
respect that warning of Washington, and we
! commend it to YOU, together with his exam.
pie pointing to the right application of it.
WHO ARE THE CoNsERvAT ATIvES?
Bat you SAY you are conservative
eminently conservative-while we are rcvo-
/ lutionarv, destructive or something of the
sort. What is conservatism? Is it not ad-
| herenca to the Old and tried against the new
and uaited? We stick to, contend for the
identical old policy on the point in controversy
which was adopted by our fathers who franz
cI the Government under which we live {;
( while you with one accord reject, and scout
and spit upon that old policy, and insist un-
on substituting something new. Trna, Won
! disagree among yourselves as to what that
| substitute shall be- You have considerable
variety Of new propositions and plans, but
/ YOU are manimous in rejecting and denounc-
/ inT the old policy of the fathers Some of
! you are for reviving the foreign slave trade
| some for Congressional slave code for the
/ Territories some for Congress forbidding
/ the Territories to prohibit slavery within
their limits; some for maintaining slavery
in the Territories through the Judiciary
some for thr "gur-reat pur-rincipe' that "if
ono man would enSlave another, no third
man should object" fantastically called
popular Sovereignty but never a man
among you in favor of Federal prohibition of
I slavery in Federal Territories. according to
| the practice of our fathers who framed the
I Government under which we live Not one
of all your various plans can show prece-
| dent or an advocate in the century within
/ which our government originated. Consid-
| er, then, whether your claim of conserva-
! tism for yourselves, and your charge of dcs-
! tructivenesS against us, are based on the
most clear and stable foundations.
/ WHO MAKES THE SLAVERY QUESTION PROMINENT
! Again, you say we have made the slavery
! question more prominent than it formerly
was. We deny It, We admit that it is
more prominent, but we deny that we made
it so. 1t was not we, but you, who discard
ell the old poticy of the fathers. We resisted
and still resist, your innovation; and thence
comes the greater prominece of the question.
/ Would you have that question reduced to its
former proportions Go back to that old
policy. What has been will be again. un-
der the same conditions. you would have
the peace of the old times, re-adopt the pre-
cepts and policy ofthe old times.
| ABOUT INSTRUCTIONS AND JOHN BROWN.
| You charge that we stir up insurrectionS
among your slaves. We deny it; AMI what
is your proof? Harper's Ferry John
Brown!l John Brown was no Republican /;
and you have failed to implicate a single Re-
publican in his lIarper's Ferry enterprise. IL
any member of our party is guilty in that
matter, you know it or yo,s do not know it.
If you do know it, you are inexcusable to not
designate the man and prove the fact. If
! You do not know it, you are ineycuSable to
assert it, and especially to persist in the as
sertion after YOU have tried and failed to
make the proof You need not be told thai
persisting in charge which one does rnt
know to be true, is simply malicious Sian
Some of You admit that no Republican de-
signedly aided or encouraged the Harper
Ferry affair; but still insists that our doc