Western Reserve chronicle. [volume] (Warren, Ohio) 1855-1921, 1862-04-16
The Democratic Party and Slavery
LETTER FROM OCCASIONAL" IN THE PnILA-
DELPHIA PRESS.
WAsurScroy, March o. 1862.

WASHINGTON, March p, 1862.
+ Z If the sermons that Time might
preach on the subject of slavery could be
preached, what a story these sermons
would tell against the leaders of the DEM
ocratic partyi At present, those who
claim to be the leaders of that once great
organization are lost between their own
mad longing for the power they have
abused, and an almost u~ncOncealed SYM
pathy with the secession traitors who help
ed them abuse it. In this maze they ca
silly forget their own records, early and
late. The reliance of these leaders is up
on the supposed ignorance of the masses
they nave so long deceived.
= = History, which is the toreh-bear-
er to Time, is a most eloquent common
tator, and one of his best texts is the rec
ord of the Democracy upon the slave
question. The Democracy has been the
nursery and the school of hostility to sla-
very. Not only the old apostles, but most
of the new ones, have either started this
sentiment or followed somebody who did
start it. The Wings were never as ready
or as rapid 10 see the arrogance and shame
of slavery as the Democracy and this
may be a consequence of the differing sys-
TENS of the two old parties-the demo-
Gratis being full of progress and inquiry,
the wings full of contact with the old or
der of things, so that they might not be
called upon TO take the task of thinking
outside of their leaders. Following this
train of thought, you will see that if JEFF
ferson was the opponent of slavery, even
in his own State of Virginia, his disciples.
the rankest democrats of succeeding gen.
standardization, Van Buren,, Silas
Wright, Francis r. Skunk, William Leg
get, William C.. Bryant, Hannibal Ham
lin and Benjamin Tappan, not to mention
the men of the present and very recent
p~eriods-have taken the same course.
The wings of the free States have gen
orally acted with these men, because of
their inherent dislike of the democracy;
but the democrats, who left or fought
their party on the slave issue, gave to
their new views, asserted under so many
trials, intense emphasis. In very few ca
ses, have the anti slavery democracy been
abolitionists; they were always practical
and ommon sense men, and hence have
been the most effective opponents of the
slave barons. The incidents that have
marked their independence of the demo-
cratic organization, because that organi-
zation refused to break the shackles of
the shareholders and their tools, from
John c. Calhoun to James Buchanan, are
full of significance and deserve to be pom
dered by all thoughtful and conscientious
men.
The resistance of the nullifiers to Gen.
Jackson's proclamation was the early out
cropping of the slave despotism, and made
a host of democrats foes of the peculiar
institution. The overthrow of Martin
Van Buren, in the election of 1910 by the
aid of Southern electoral votes and his
defeat for the nomination in 1874 in the
Baltimore Convention by Southern lead
ers, and the removal of Francis P. Blair
from the ~organship of the Washington
Globe, the old mouth-piece of the radical
democracy, each and all being so many
evidences of the growing and exacting
spirit of the slave power, transformed
hosts of democrats into anti slavery pro-
pagandists; and while these aggressions
served to consolidate the slave influence,
they weakened it in the free North and
Northwest.