Raftsman's journal. [volume] (Clearfield, Pa.) 1854-1948, 1861-02-06
PLAIN TRUTHS PLAINLY TOLD.

three being under consideration,
Mr.. GILMER, Amer of North Carolina. said
desperate struggle was now going on in all
the Southern States to consummate that which
South Carolina now avowed she had at heart
Tor the last thirty or forty years. When he
was boy the doctrine of notification was
preached in that State. 1t was declared to
De peaceful remedy, the only remedy by
winch the differences which then existed be-
tween that State and the General Government
could be settled, and by which the Union could
De saved but when that doctrine was crushed
out by Gen. Jackson the next resource was
secession, and in order to give some little
piauslo1lty to 1t, 1t was said to be of most
peaceful character. Notification could nev-
er have many friends, and secession would
have but very few friends were it not for that
decoy doctrine, the fruitful and seductive re-
commendaton which was attached to it, that
1t was peaceful in character. He would come
to the history of events within the last twelve
months TO the time when the Democratic party,
which had been broken up by the nullifiers and
seceders at Charleston and Baltimore. Their
nullifyiDg friends on that occasion relied upon
the action they might take in a separate Con-
yention, which it said contained many
prudent and patriotic men. They did not then
hold out the idea that the election of Lincoln
would be a just cause for disruptng the Gov
ernment. They held out the fact that they had
made Union nomination, and placed at the
head of their ticket Union. loving men. But
when they were charged with having had
design to disrupt the Government in case they
were defeated ,and in case Lincoln was elected,
these men universally and generally through
out the South denied this charge most manful-
ly. The men who controlled that party-the
men who were first on the Breckenridge ticket
and who declared that notification was peace
ful and secession was proper and peaceful
remedy-where were they now? They were
faro ave yter he bar Sfata
doing all they could to destroy the Govern
ment and break up the Union. What was the
course being now pursued Were they giving
the country time for reflection Where they
giving it time for thought and consideration
Mo- but while they found State after State
going ont of the Confederacy, they still found
men indisposed to let the country have an
hour to do what 1t should do in this crisis.
While the Gulf States were calling for con-
veDtions, what did they sect They found
that dispatches were going from this place
dispatches, not of peace, not for reason, not
for rehection-no, but dispatches calcula-
ted TO irritate the public mind, and still more
to fire the Southern heart, and to spread a.
mong the Southern people that madness under
which they were now acting. Mr.. Gilmer
then read from the Virginia manifesto, which
declared that the Republicans were determine
ed to precipitate civil war upon the South.
There were two propositions, dangerous in
that Virginia's only safety was III leaving the
Union and the second, equally fallacious,
equally dangerous, equally destructive, was, |
that this the only way to reconstruct the |
Union. he would also refer to a letter writ |
ten by Seator Clingman to TIE Democratic |!
Standard, a paper published in North Carolina, |
in which the people were warned that it was
the determination of the Republican party to /
subugate the South, and finally to abolish |
Slavery in the States, even at the risk of civil |
war. This idea of reconstruction was only |
part and parcel OF that fruitful source through |
which the public mind in the South was to be |
lulled for time, until they were precipitated +
into civil war and disruption of the Union. |
But was the separation of the fifteen Slave /
States from the eighteen Free States the pro- |
per mode to be pursued to secure reconstruc-
tion of the Government There was pur- /
pose and design in all this; but he continued
to assure them that if the people of the Dor.
der States could be assured that the object of
these men who were hurrying the South into
extremes was to break up the Union, they
would shudder with horror at the very idea, as
the men who voted for Breckinridge would at
the knowledge of the truth, had they been
told, they ought to have been told, that the
men who put Mr.. Breckenridge in nomination
intended to break up the Union if they failed.
They would have shuddered at the idea of as
sisting in such a work. The honest farmers
and mechanics and traders of the South would
shudder if they were told that the movement,
represented to them as one intended for the
purpose of securing Southern rights under
of the Government, was, in
fact, designed by the men of the Baltimore
platform to dIssever the Union and break up
the Government. The men of the South
would shudder at the great mistake they had
made in voting in compliance with those Sc
cessionists and disunionists. They might as
well hope to put together the delicate machin-
cry of watch, after it had been broken into
atoms by the heavy strokes of a sledge- ham,
mer, as to hope for reconstruction of this
Government and Union, after a virtual separa-
tion. He would have Virginia, North Caroli-
ma, Tennessee, and the other border States, to
what these Breckinridgers had told
them before the election, and what these men
had since done so that they might fully under
stand in time what was meant by reconstruc-
tion of the Government. He would say to his
Northern friends, in the face of those things,
that they had it in their power, without the
of an iota of single principle, to
crush out these men and their teachings in an
hour. They had it in their power, by single
act in that House, to crush fosever those whom
they considered their enemies, and the enc.
mics of this Government-this great and glo-
rious country. Let them but give the coun-
Try the assurance that they willing to meet
the exigencies of the moment, and that hour
,onsigns those secession leaders to the tomb.
1t was not because the secessionists consider
I'd the Crittenden propositions of any great
7alue to the South that they asked them, nor
because it would injure the North to grant
hem; but because those men thought that
hey were safe in making issue upon them,
believing that the North would not concede. ]
BY refusing them he could assure them that I
he work of infaming the Southern mind
would go on, and it would never rest till the
Union was irrevocably broken up. And yet