Daily intelligencer. [volume] (Wheeling, Va. [W. Va.]) 1859-1865, 1863-08-26
James w. Paxton FOR Congress.


Editors Intelligeneer:
am an outsider so faras the eIection.iu
the first District is concerned; but it has
been my good fortune to make the acquains
lance of many of the most estimable and
talented men in that district, aud among
them all, have met with no gentleman
whose qualifications, intellectually, moral
", politically and socially, more pre- emf
nently fit him for seat in the Congress of
the United States, than James W. Paxton
of your city.
Mr.. Paxton, it is true, is Republican,
but the time is past in West Virginia when
it is necessary to offer an apology for either
being Republican, or voting for one
Mr.. Paxton is q representative man, too
honorable to press his claims personally,
or to descend to the dirty work of the poll
itician and solicit his friends to do so for
him. The present Administration has sus-
tanned US, and no man has contributed
more to the attainment of our position as
free State than Mr.. Paxton. Those who
saw him laboring in the Constitutional
Convention and at Washington City, to
secure the cherished hope of West Virgin
ians-G net0 and free StGte-as 1 did, those
who know him as do, to be true man,
an honorable man, conservative, prudent,
principles, will unite with me in bearing
testimony to the virtues and merits of
friend-of a man who habitually takes
large views of all subjects, and who from
the very goodness of his heart, cherishes
and esteems good loyal man, although
heretofore that man may have been Wing
or Democrat.
While speaking of the strongly marked
features of Mr.. Paxton's character, what
has not failed to impress itself forcibly upon
me, cannot but have attracted the atten-
ton of others, and that is, the kind and
gentIemanly manner with which he differs
from you in opinion, and the charitable
construction he habitually gives to the mo-
tives of those who thus differ with him,
and the extreme care taken by him, in any
possible manner or in the slightest degree,
to avoid injuring the feelings of Others. l
have no motive to disparage tho claims of
other good men belonging to the same
party, but the right of election gives to the
electors the right and the opportunity to
compare the fitness of men, and that fitness
in Mr.. Paxton is, in my estimation, found
ed upon the very virtues l have herein
enumerated.
And it should not be forgotten for a
single instant by the friends of West Vir-
ginia, that our salvation depends upon
the men we shall choose to represent us in
the next Congress. We may select men
who will vote men and money, and who
will fully meet all our expectations, dur
ing the continuance of the rebellion; but
are we sure we can rely on these men when
the great question of the war is to be de-
cided2 Are they made of the stern mate
rial which the times demand? Are they
prepared to vote affirmatively on the great
question which the American people have
resolved then and there to make2 which
is, that slavery or involuntary serVitude.
except for the punishment of crime, shall
not continue to exist on one single foot of
soil in any State whose government has
been in rebellion against the Government
of the United States. Are they prepared
to re-vitalize the great declaration of hui
man freedom which Virginia's greatest
statesman enInciated in the Declaration
of Independence; and which at the moment
of its utterance gave US n character in the
eyes of the world that no nation of that
day had attained, and which we, as ma
ton, have signally and shamefully failed
to sustain in all our past history.
That all men are created equal; that they
are eRdowed By their Creator S0ith certain IN.
aleniabLe rights; that among these are life
Lberfv and the pursuit of happiGesS." Are
these men, whose good fortune it may be
to represent the free State of West Vir-
ginia in the Congress of the United States,
to give the great nation that ex-
allied position among the nations of the
earth which legitimate Interpretation of
the fundamental principles of our Govern
ment warrants and qualifies-and upon
which as fundamental principle the fab
rio of no other government was primative-
" constructed, a principle which the
British Government did not reach until
many centuries after its organization, and
then only after the great truth had
been proclaimed to the world in our de-
claration of independence. We want men
who will labor to make the law so that
liberty, in the language of Curran, shall
oe commensurate With and inseperable from
American soil. A law which proclaims
even to the stranger and the sojourner, the
first moment that he sets his foot upon
American earth, that the ground upon
which he treads is holy, and consecrated
by the genius of universal emancipation"
l am very much mistaken in the
signs of the times if we are not rap
idly approaching the period when the
Gland of the free and the home of the
brave'i shall be so, not in song only, but
in deed and in truth. He reads he events
around him very carelessly indeed, who
does not discern, that liberty-tEHiueTSGL
kibeyty-must follow this rebellion. That
the attempt of the rebellious States to riv-
it more firmly than before the chains of
slavery, and the language of Mr.. Stephens
$50 create government, the corner stone
of winch shall be Slavery" will bnt have
the effect to originate in the minds of the
American people, close, earnest, vigorous,
and healthy thought, and to induce in them
a recurrence to fr0t:principles;t those princi-
Piles that their fathers hailed with joy:when
on the 4th of July, 1776, the bell on old In
dependence Hall rang out on the morning
air the glad chorus Of liberty, that will
lead them TO the determination to carry
out practically, that which Washington
and jefferson hoped would, in few years,
be accomplished by comparison of the
tr,r srstayna 1f fraad0r, onI sIava,1, eide