The weekly north Iowa times. [volume] (McGregor, Iowa) 1857-1867, 1864-03-09
Wendell Phillps.

This brilliant, dangerous MIN has re-
Gently ventilated another instalment of his
intense radcalsm at the Cooper Institute
lie condemns Lincoln's Amnesty Procla.
nation as surrender Of the Executive
power to Judicial authority, and says
those who sympathizc with the radical Gle.
ment, demand that the Constitution be so
amended that the Supreme Court cannot
reach the question urged upon the nation
by the agents of "God and Humanity"
"You may say we have no power to so
amend the Constitution. Yes our consti.
tutional life is limited one, except one
line; but there is one line Of the Constitu-
ton which gives US sovereignty as un
limited as Victoria, or the Throne of France.
by that line which says: The people may
amend the Constitution You could make
Lincoln hereditarly President; if you
choose, give it to his son. You could make
the Senate hereditary; you could give wo-
men the ballot; you can take It from men
under fifty years old you can do any.
thing"
Certainly ; you can 60 back to the dark
est days Of European despotism and recede
the word to the hour which owned Cali.
gula or Nero. You can commit national
suicide, and overslaugh all ideas of Re-
publican, government, but is this the enter
tainment to which Massachusetts, politicians
invite us?
Mr.. Phillips uses the following terse Ian
guage relative to the future
"The cement of this Union is to be mu-
tual respect of the sections, bred of that
blood which has mingled on brave,y con-
tested fields. The South thought of the
Yankee as one who knew only how to
cheat. She met him at Chattanooga and
changed her mind The North thought of
the South as only gasconade and empty
vaunt. We have battlcd her for four years
and learned to respect her sincerity, if not
her intelligence, and out Of that mutual
respect is to grew Union as indestructible
and indivisible as the granite that holds up
the continent"
In the course Of his address he says the
North and its civilization will triumph and
that "neither the powers Of heaven above,
or the copperheads of earth beneath, or
the secessionists of Richmond under the
earth. can prevent it,"
The regulation of their domestic nstitu.
tons by each state he strongly objects to
and exults that this political theorem is
exploded.
snow full power is in our hands, and il
We did not do the work thoroughly, the
responsibility would rest with the present
generation. The old Union is so complete
~ gone that Connecticut full of Barnums
could not find it, We were 10 form a new
Union, the basis Of which was to lie per-
feet equality"
Wendell pays an undessrved compliment
to copperheads and seccssionists by class
ing them with "the powers of Heaven,
above" but then it is not strange that the
fanaticism Of the hour presumcs to measure
arms with Deity.
He wanted the Constitution so amended
as ito give the negro all the rights of citi.
zenship, the ballot, the school-house and
the soil !" "But it is essential that Mr..
Lincoln declares broad, unmistakable,
radical policy" embodying all the modern
improvements"
We give the above little "gems" from
Wendell in the hope that our coIored ex.
changes can see where we are drifting to-.
Not that we fret great deal about the fact,
or that we are anxious to tnlighten those
who have sold their birth-right of free dis,
cussion for miserable "mess of pottage,"
but because we want contemporaries to un-
derstand that We are not blind to passing
events. An earth. quake only can now
sake up our countrymen to the political
naelstrom before them, and as we have no
earth quakes on hand at present, we con-
tent ourselves in noting the ''hand writing
on the WALL" Look at 1t!