Raftsman's journal. [volume] (Clearfield, Pa.) 1854-1948, 1865-08-30
DEMOCRATIC" STATE CONVENTION

ton Col W. W. Fl. DAVIS, of Bucks coun-
ty, for Auditor General. and Major JOHN
LINTON, of Cambria county, for Surveyor
General Both served in the army, the lat
1 ter we believe being attached to the regi-
ment of which his competitor on the Repub-
lican ticket was Colonel. We are sorry that
two soldiers, with as good military reputa-
| ton as is claimed for them, should permit
! themselves to be drawn into such bad COM
pany As soldiers, however, they have no
advantage over the Republican nominees,
who earned for themselves names which
will not soon be forgotten.
The resolutions, which are said to have
been proposed by Hon jeremiah S. Black,
and which are of the oily CANNON species,
are as follows:
Resofred, That we, the Democracy of
| Pennsylvania, are now, as we always have
been, faithful to the Union of the States, OPP
| posing the secession of the South with all
our influence and having no sympathy or as
sociation whatever with that party in the
North which plotted against the Union and
pronounced the Constitution "a coyen MT
| with death and agreement with hell.
| Second That if the counsels of the Dem
ocratic party had prevailed the Union would
| have been saved in all it's integrity and hon
or, without the slaughter, debt and disgrace
of civil war. But when the formation of
sectional parties in the North and in tie
South, and the advent of one of these parties
into the seats OF power made war fact
which we could not counteract, we sustained
the Federal authorities in good faith, asking
nothing at their hand except a decent res
pect for our legal rights and some show of
common honesty In the management OF our
/! financial affairs, but in both these particu-
lars we were disappointed and betrayed,
Third That the Constitution established
| by our revolutionary fathers is entitled to
our unqualified respect and obedience the
oath to support it is binding, religiously,
morally and legally, at all times, under all
| circumstances, and In every part of the coun-
try upon all public officers from the high
est to the lowest, as well as upon private cit
liens; it is only by strict perseverance of
its provisions, and rigid enforcement of its
obligations in all the States. that we can
hope for union, liberty or peace. He who
wilfully violates 1t, or counsels violation bT
Others is public enemy and dishonest man.
Fourth. That among the rights guaran-
teed to us by the planest words of the Con-
stitution are these: Free press, freedom
from arbitrary arrest and illegal imprison
ment, trial by jury, the writ of habeas cor
pus, the perfect immunity of all persons not
in the army or navy from any species of pun
ishmeDt for crime or pretended crime which
is not the legal consequence Of legal con-
I viction by an impartial jury, the absolute
subordination of all military power to the
civil authority, and the privilege of white
citizens to vote at the State elections, ac-
cording to the laws of the State.
| Fifth. That we fully concur with Presl-
dent johnson In the conviction expressed by
him in 1860, and repeated several times
since, that the Federal Government is SOW
ereign within its proper sphere that it acts
not through or upon the States but directly
upon individuals t. at the State could not
absolve the people from their federal oblga
tions that the State ordinances of secession
were utilities, and, therefore, when the at
tempted revolution came to an end by the
submission of the insurgents, the Sta es
were as much a part Of the Union as they
had been before. Their people were bound
to the SAM duties and clothed with the
same rights, excepting, of course such rights
| as individuals smong them had legally for
feited by their own acts in the meantime,
and we hereby declare so far as we can pre-
vent it, the resumption of their proper pla-
ces in the Union by those States, some of
whose citizens were lately in rebellion, shall
not be impeded or delayed by the unlawful
interference of that faction at the North
which was always hostile to the Union,
which now pronounces it legally desolated,
and which is still Indignantly laboring to
prevent its restoration.
Sixth. That the effort now making by
certain persons to use the power of the Gen
eral Government with a view to force negro
suffrage on the States against the will of the
people and contrary to existing laws, is not
only high crime against the Constitution,
but deliberate and wicked attempt to put
the States of this Union (all Of them more
or less and some of them entirely under the
domination of negroes, to Africanze large
portion of the country, and degrade the
white race, morally and socially as well as
politically, to the low level of the black.
We will not acknowledge the incapacity of
our own race to govern itself, nor surrender
the destinies of the country into the hands
of negroes, nor put themselves under their
guardianship, nor give up to them the polt-
ical privileges which we inherited from our
fathers and we exhort our brethren in other
States to take up the same attitude and
maintain it firmly
, Seventh. That we will support President
johnson in every just effort he may make to
place all the States in their proper positions,
to give to them fair representation in Con-
gress, to save them from the curse of negro
equality; he shall have our hearty approval
when he inficts legal punishment by means
of legal tribunals upon offenders against the
United States, and we will be with him in
every means which looks to the maintenance
of the public credit But our full approval
of his administration can be founded only in
the belief that he will execute the law, the
whole law, and nothing but the law I'D all