Holmes County farmer. [volume] (Millersburg, Ohio) 1857-1926, 1861-01-10

mlnent peiils from internal dssenslons.
The public tranquility is seriously dis.
turbed. The patriotism of tho Country
is justly alarmed. The unity of the Gov
ernment is denied. Doctrines subvcrtive
of its existence are boldly advocated and
made the basis Of state action. Under
the pretended right of state to secede
from the Conledracy at its pleasure, in
peace or war, constitutional liberty is
imperiled, revolution is meditated, and
treas on is justified
We may well pause to enquire, why
these discontents, these hostile demon.
strations against the Federal Government.
Ambitious men in Republics who find
their aims thwarted by the regular and
peaceful workings of ofgovernment, always
seek pretexts to disturb its easy progress,
however prosperous. Party, sectional,
personal prejudices, the growth, divisions
in local institutions, habits, pursuits, are
seized upon by such men to create hostil-
tiles between the various clases of a coun-
try, strongly united by common interests,
but whose union gives them a grandeur
too imposing to be grasped by malcon-
tents who without merit to reach the high
est authority in great Commonwealth,
would reduce it to fragments to bacome
mastess in a part. Such conspirators
never disclose the secret motives of their
discomfort, but fabricate pretences for dis
satisfaction among the masses they would
move, by appeals to their pride, their en-
Wy, their jealousies, quickened by mar
row, mistaking, yet honest patriotism for
the locality of its birth, which from pecu-
larity in domestic institutions, has lost
the vantage ground of superior political
influence, once held in the Cohiederacy.
The vast disproportionate increase of
political power ofthe free States over that
of the slave States, especially those where
the wealh flows from an industry and n
species of agriculture which eXpels the
white race, and accumulates another fatal
to all progress, has created preponder-
ance in the Northern, Western and Mid
die States which has secured to them the
pcrmenaut control Of the government.
During the first As years after the
Republic it had its impulse, for the most
part, from the great heart beating in its
GENITAL region. Except the two from Mas
sachusetts, all the Presidents may be said
to have been Virginia Presidents, for
jackson and Van Buren were chosen thro'
her influence. During the administration
of the elder Adams, her star dominated
over the Congressional councils in the
person of Vice President Jefferson, during
that of the second, it rose again in both
branches of Congress through the prestige
impaired to her candidate, jackson, by
the cammanling eloquence Of her Sena-
tors and Representatives.
Throughout the almost half century of
Republican rule, and under the auspices
of Virginia, the free states were not mere
" content, but with the exception Of a
paroxism growing out Of the cemmercial
difficulties contrived by Great Britain,
dissipated by the war she provoked, and
the monetary panic quieted by the Missou-
ri Compromise gave it that Jealous sup
port which rendered this era so happy and
prosperous for the whole country. Sla-
very, the anomaly in our Institutions,
was looked upon throughout this period
as q distressing excrescence, the result OF
the yoke we had worn in our infancy, and
which the strength of our Constitution
would in time throw off.
1t was not until the Premiership of
Mr. Calhoun, which opened the designs
of slavery propagandism,' that serious
alarm arose among the friends of Repub-
lican government, that the power of sec
tional interest, founded on slavery, was
meditating the means of contestlng It's
supremacy over the continent. The free
states accorded to the South all the terri
tory in which slavery previously existed, /,
to open up and drain off the the sources
of its maera by the African labor it pos
sessed. They trusted that as the Anglo.
Saxon race of freemen multiplied and
overhowed from the north and middle re-
gions, the inferior race would reccde fur
ther South, and make this whole continent
the abode of freedom. But the demand
that acquisitions of free territory should
be consigned to slavery; that California
should be rejected from the Union because
she came in with free republican con-
stituton in her hand, unveiling the decep-
ton practised in the pledge, given by
leading advocates of the annexation ofTex-
as, that it would open the way for the
withdrawal of slavery from the temperate
zone on its march to mingle with the
freed blacks in the tropics af Central Am
erica. The compromise of 1880, provi-
ding for the admission of four additional
slave states from Texas, consecrated that
portion added from the New Mexican con-
quest east of the Rio Grande and north
of the Missouri Compromise line to free
dom-athough claimed by Texas-and
left all the rest of the territory acquired to
the construction of the Mexican law which
had at one time abolished slavery eXis-
ting there. This was the second hard won
pacifcation by which Mr.. Clay hoped to
lay forever the sceptre of disunion, foun-
ding it on the principle of the Ordinance
of 1877, which had resigned to slavery
all the territory which prperly appertain-
ed to the dominion Of the slave States,
reserving that belonging to tho United
States for freemen exclusively. The lead
ing parties in their presidential platforms,
in which they submitted their claims for
the sanction of the popular vote at the
Immediately ensuing election, ratified this
settlement of 1850, adding a new sane
tion to the Missouri Compromise. But
both these comracts between the States
for the settlement of the great sectional
issues were nullifnd nv the Kansas Ne