The daily Gate City. [volume] (Keokuk, Iowa) 1855-1916, 1865-08-05
ALWAYS look on our second and third pages
for reading matter.
The Tendencies Of the DemOc-
rACV.


The Democracy have some singular notions,
amongst which we note as specially promi-
nent the idea that the Union exists for the
Constitution and not the Constitution for the
Union, and that both the Union and the Con-
stitution, as well as the rights and interests
of the people, are merely subsidiary to the
dogma Of State sovereignty. State rights and
State sovereignty, phrases coined by slave
holders in the interests of the Southern oil
garchies, are dominant in the Democratic
party, and are regarded in themselves as the
chief good in our form of Government That
party has elevated the instrumentalities by
which the public good should be secured, and
the rights and liberties of the people should
be promoted, above the objects for which they
were created, and treat them with exclusive
reverence in utter disregard of the fact that
Governments are instituted amongst men to
secure the fundamental rights of the people
and to be just must have the consent of the
governed.
South Carolina has been the model Demo
cratic State, always true to the Democratic
party, and ever carrying out to their logical
consequences the principles and views of the
party. 1t has always been the white mans S
Democratic State Government, where the
principles of the oligarohic State Rights De-
mocracy have had full play. 1t never allowed
a colored man or poor man the right of suf-
frage, and never permitted any man who owned
less than ten slaves to be representve in
the Legislature. In violation of the inherent
and inalienable rights of man, it made chat
tells of three-fourths of the people of the State
and reduced the rest of its laboring population
to condition but little more desirable than
that of slavery.
Being as it was the chosen seat of the De-
mocracy, with ample scope and verge enough
for the full development of its principles and
policy, its history and its polity becomes in
structive, and indicates with unerring certain.
" the tendencies of that party in this coun-
try. South Carolina led off in the rebellion
on the States Rights theory, and the Demo.
cratic President, BUCHANAN, proclaimed the
Democratic doctrine in his last annual mes
sage, that the National Government had no
constitutional authority to '.eoerce" the reh-
els to obedience TO the laws and Constitution
of the United States. And on that Demo
cratic dogma the leaders of the party under
various pretences opposed the war during its
progress, and ultimately proclaimed in
National Convention that the war had proved
u failure. II used TO be the boast of the Dem
ocratic party, and soon will be again, that its
principles were the same in the North and
the South and that it was entirely safe to advo-
cate its principles and policy in every State of
the Union.
Why then has not the Democracy developed
as fully In other States as i'll South Carolina ?
Not surely because its principles were differ
ent But because their development was re-
strained by circumstances and surroundings
and the pressure of public opinion, and of free
discussion to which it was not exposed in the
model State Of South Carolina. Whenever
the Democracy was uncontrolled, it rushed
into rebellion in invitation of South Carolina,
and, wherever the majority was against the
democracy, the leaders being afraid to resist
the Government by arms, did their best to
give aid and comfort to the Democracy in re-
bellion by opposing the war and villifying the
Government. The bond of sympathy between
the rebels and Copperheads was never bro
ken, and now that the war is over they are
rushing into iraternal embraces, and harmo-
riously reuniting TO maintain their old primer
Piles, and to right "the great wrong" which
has been perpetrated against the South by the
war, which the official organ Of the National
Democracy plaintively confesses the North
ern Democracy were powerless to prevent.
Let the people remember that South Caro-
lima is model Democratic State, and that the
tendencies of Democratic principles develop
States after that pattern.
Tho Ralsnl Debt