Fremont journal. [volume] (Fremont, Sandusky County [Ohio]) 1853-1866, 1865-09-29
HaW sHALL WE vnrR.

4
issue is as yet distinctly made, a very grave
issue soon will be, that of reorganization
and he must look to the antecedents and
composition of parties to infer what their
probable action will be.
The Union party comprises the great
body of enlightened American citizens who
have always faithfully striven for greater
justice for universal liberty regulated by
the law, and forfreedom of speech and the
Press everywhere in the country. They
have unfalteringly asserted the rights of the
whole people against privilege and aristo-
cracy in every form, and have claimed fair
play for all men, rich or poor, foreigner or
native, whatever their complexion and con-
dition, and to that end have been constant
ly Jealous for popular education and every
method OF enlightenment. They hold that
the Constitution is not compact between
sovereign government, but is fundamen-
tai national law established by the people
of the United States; and that the Union
is not Confederacy but nation. They
believe that this National Government is
supreme, that the states properly subordin-
ated to it, and that State rights are purely
locay and secondary. Therefore they have
been steadily faithful in the great and sue
cessful struggle. They have never lamp
cred with rebellion. They have never JUS
titled treason nor excused traitors; and in
the death grapple with rebellion they have
wisely used every power of the Govern
ment, conscious that all extraordinary pow
ers were exercised by magistrates under the
immediate supervision of the people, and
whose acts merely recorded the popular
will, as the election of 1854 triumphantly
proved.
This is the faith, and these are the men
who compose the great Union party
Have they forfeited the confidence ofthe
country!
On the other hand, the Democratic par
ty is composed of those who have always
excused the most appalling crime against
human nature, and the most fatal treason
to the American principle of equal rights,
under the pretense of State rights: who
percistently connived at the extension and
perpetuity of thatinjustice which has soak
ed the land in blood and necessitated the
debt They have been the assailants of
free speech and free press, and have justi-
fed the murder and 'maltreatment of citi-
zens who claimed to exercise those rights
in the Southern States. Their influence
has been adverse to general education and
wise progress and reform; and their pre-
dominance has been and is always most
marked among the most debased part of
the population, and in the least intelligent
portions of the country. Even now their
Conventions, distinctly and openly in Ohio,
reaffirm the principles of the Virginia and |
Kentucky resolutions of'9s, which are and |
always have been pleded by the rebels as
their justification, as they were by South |
Carolina for notification in 1888, and which |
will aways afford an ambush for treason
until they are utterly and expressly over
thrown: or, as in Pennsylvania, their Con-
vention deliberately declared that the prac-
tical recognition of the truth of the DecIar-
alton of Independence is high crime
against the Constitution of the United |
States. They are those from whose ranks
came the chiefs of the rebellion; who de- |
nounced the people of the loyal States are
really responsible for the war; who inces-
sanity thwarted the Government in its eff |
forts to subdue it; who melted riots and di-
rectedImobs; for whose success at the polls
the rebel chiefs and editors openly prayed |
in the midst of the war; who solicited |
through foreign Minister foreign inter-
ference in our contest; who year ago, in
their National Convention, declared the |
soldiers conquered and the war afailure,
and who sneered at President Lincoln as
helpleSsly weak or denounced him as a |
murderer, tyrant, and harlequin.
These are they who compose the Demo
cratic party. They are now bnsily engag-
ed in praising the soldiers, whom last year
they slandered, and in celebrating the re-
establishment of the Union. They are
even engaged in the pleasing process of
eating the Chicago platform. But what |
has this party, in whose Ohio Convention
Vallandigham was chief orator, in whose |
Pennsylvania Convention Judge Black was
an applauded teacher, who said, as Bu-
chanan's Attrney-General, that the war
would legalize secession and dissolve the
Union-what has this party done to be
intrusted with the power by the American
people who condemned it so overwhelming
ly last November? Wespeak of a party,
not of individuals. We do not forget with
what absolute sacrifice, with what blood
and money, many Democrats stood by the
country. But neither do we forget that
as a party the Democrats voted against
and that in the States which
they controlled the amendment was defeat
ed. We do not forget that if the Demo-
cratic party had retained power in 1850
they would have compromised the honor
of the country without permanently avoid
ing the war, and We remember, nor will
the American people soon forget, that in
1864 they solemnly proposed acquiescence
in national disgrace and ruin.
These are the two parties who now so
licit our votes. Let every man who loves
a Union undbscured by ''the resolutions of
'9s," who loves his country and believes
that equal rights for all men before the
law are essential to her permanent peace
and prosperity, ask herself which of these
ought to have his yote.-HGper's Weekly.
STATE TREASURER APPOINTED.
A Columbus dispatch announces that