The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1865-04-10

ity OF the legal voters, and because those VINO
! opposed the measures with which his name
was Identified, could not agree upon COM
mon platform and q common candidate. Let
it be remembered, thst the prohibition of sla-
very in the territories, the repeal of the Fugi-
tive Slave Law, the amendment OF the Constr
tuition abolishing slavery, were only possible
because those who might more effectually OPP
nose the democratic tendencies of the nation
by political intrigue, had vacated their seats
in Congress to oppose them by ,car.
But who doubts that atI the States Of the
Union will elect the next President? Is it not
probable that all the States of the Union will
constitute the very next national Congress?
In 1854, indeed, Mr.. Lincoln and his policy
of war and emancipation received decided
majority Of the votes Of the people participa-
ting in the election, and would have had a ma
Jority of the electors though each State had
been represented in the electoral college,
But consider what tremendous advantages we
had. The war was more than ever prosper
Gus; the finances had been relieved; it was Of
fcially disclosed that separation or subjuga-
tion was the only alternative offered by the
enemy. We went into the election with the
patronage that attaches to an expenditure of
$7O0,0o0O00 per annum, with the body of Of
1ce holders, quadrupled by the military and
excise place holders, and nime-senths of
monster army, officers and men, propagandists
of our principles. The Mcclellan party went
into the campaign with the depressieg knowl-
edge that eleven States, theirs by the old ties
of a common devotion to the defence and ex-
tension of slavery, could not give them vote.
And yet how slight influences, in spite of III
our advantages, might have swung round the
nearly balanced States of New Hampshire
Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania, Indi-
ana and Illinois, and sent Mcclellan to the
White House. If the Democratic managers
had had only the assurance of the votes of tie
eleven States in rebellion for a point dappui,
upon which to expend their money, if they
had not attempted, or, attempting, had not
been detected in the scheme to swindle the
soldiers out of their votes, they might have
saved their cause.
UNIVERSAL CHANGE IN SOUTHERN OPINION
IMPROBABLE,
Very well. Providence finds means to save
even popular governments from the catastro-
pies which threaten them. And so ours was
saved But now for the future. We cannot
keep up military domination over the South
after it has submitted to the government. The
waste of war has been great. Many of the
participators in the rebellion will have perish
ed by the sword they rashly invoked; some
will escape abroad; very many more, we be-
lieve, will be made, by the stern judgments
that have fallen on them, penitent. But after
all these changes, we must expect the popula-
tons of the eleven States to come back to the
Union cherishing the opinions and autipathies
with which they went out. Fluctuating as
opinions are, we know that masses of men do
/ not readily change either their religious or
political creeds. If man is Baptist, Uni
versalist, a Quaker, an Abolitionist or Dem
ocrat, the probability is that he will remain SO.
As the statistician can calculate that Vermont
will vote against slavery and in favor of equal
rights, SO he can that Alabama will vote fer
slavery and in favor of class rights. The
presumption, then. is, that when these now re-
bsllious and hostile communities return IN
peace to cooperate with US In determining
the measures and policy of the nation, they
will return with their cid convictions and
their old prejudlces. They will re-establish
slavery unless forbidden by the terms Of pacif-
ication, or the organic law,-~and in that case
they will substitute for it serfdom as near
like slavery as possible, to be gradually and by
political methods assimiiated to it. They will
be forced to take the slow steps BY which
from 1920 to 1850 they debauched the popular
mind and made the dominion of the slave pow
err possible, and sorecoyer, by political arts, in
which they were always successful, what they
have lost in four years of disastrous war.
WITH THE FREEDMEN WE ARE THE MAJOR
ITY.
How shall we prevent the old combination,
by which we were steadily overborne, between
the slave masters of the South and the leaders
OF the Ignorant masses of the North, and this
reactionary power from destroying, act after
act, all the beneficial legislation of the last four
years? If any one doubts the malignity and
indocility of political reactions, let him study
the history of the restorations of the Stuarts
and the Bourbons, after the revolutions which
they crushed out. As if in anticipation Of the
time when Mason, and Toombs, and Davis, !
restored to their old ascendency in the United
States Senate, should make inquisition for
their record, the Democratic members of
Congress have voted steadily against those
measures by which the Shareholders control
over the republic has been weakened. The
press and orators of the North will have only
here and there an inadvertent word to swal-
low when the day shall come which they have
all along acted in anticipation OF, when the
King Charles of Cotton and Slauecy shall
come to hts oWn again.
How shall such calamitous reaction be ar
rested? How shall we put the accomplished |
revolution, the last and best development of
the democratic ideas Of the Declaration of
Independence, upon its only legitimate basis
and sanctioD,--the majority Of the people?-
Only by recognizing that maj ority, without
any disqualification of condition, caste or col
or. By throwing ourselves boldly upon the
democratic principle, that all just govern
ments derive their power from the consent of
the governed. In fine, by making the negroes
ooters, as we have acknowledged them to be |
citizens and compelled them, as having the
same stake with us in the government, to help |
us defend it.
Artillery
Ring, Lowell and Webster, now recruiting |
the last cOmpdnu under the Dresent call. have |