The Wheeling daily intelligencer. [volume] (Wheeling, W. Va.) 1865-1903, 1866-07-16

shall be protected, and society shall |
not be demoralized for the want of a |
public judgment as to whether treason
can attempt the life of the State, and
having failed, regain its prestige.
THE excitement in Congressional
circles at Washington last week, was
perhaps greater than at any period of |
the session. The proposed Philadel-
phia Convention in August next was
element of the excitement. |
Our readers have already been inform
ed of what transpired at the Union eau
Gus, especially of the speech made |
by Mr.. Raymond, editor of the New |
York Times, one of the three Repub-
lican papers of the country that had up
TO that time sustained the call for the |
Convention. Mr.. Raymond partly con-
fessed that he had misunderstood the
nature of the proposed Convention,
and that whereas he Mt first understood
it to be a proposed gathering of exclu-
sively Union men, members in the last
presidential campaign of the great Union
party of the country, he now under
stood quite differently, and was salts
fled that it was to be made up simply of
so-called republicans, so-called conser-
natives, and so-called reconstructed
rebels from the South" He, therefore,
was willing to wash his hands of any
further apology or advocacy Oft.
No small Importance is attached ut
Washington to these reported utter
ances of Mr.. Raymond, because, in the
first place, he is editor of the Times
newspaper, and in the next, is sup
in New York politics, the conser-
vative republicans in contradistinc-
ton from those who follow
the Tribune. 1t is believed now
at Washington, that the convention will
be almost exclusively made up of those
who in 1864 composed the Chicago Con-
vention, and who sympathized with,
and voted for the ticket there nomina-
ted, and of those in the South who were
at that time in arms against the United
States government. There may be some
others, for, of course, there is more or
less of new accretion in all parties.
The main elements of the convention,
however, will not be made up from the
great Union organization of the coun-
try. That much is clear enough thus
far in advance. Very few, if any, of
the true Union men of the South will
participate in it. We have already
quoted the views of John Minor Bolts
concerning it. Men like him discard it
rs simply a convention of the old en-
envy of the country under a new dis
guise.
We have letter from Washington,
written by one who has special oppor-
tunities for seeing the political situa-
ton. All due allowance, however, is
to be made for the fact that Washing
ton is the poorest standpoint in the
country from which to view the pOliti-
cal situation, especially at time like
the present, when the excitement runs
unnaturally high and the political
Cauldron is boiling and seething as it
has not since the war terminated. The
programme of the Philadelphia Con-
vention, as detailed by our correspon-
dent, is as follows:
1t will meet and declare that repre-
sentation and taxation go hand in
hand under our Government, and are
not under any circumstances to be sep
arated. That the Southern States are
States in the Union on perfect euuali-
ty with the Northern or loyal States;
that they have the same right to be
represented at this time in Congress,
and that unless they are accorded this
representation without any conditions
precedent in the shape of constitutional
amendments, they will not submit to
the imposition of taxes. Furthermore,
it is said that the Convention before
organizing will issue an address to the
people of the late rebellious States,
calling upon them to elect members of
Congress, where they have not already
done so, and to instruct the representa-
tives thus elected to proceed to Wash
ington and in body demand their ad-
mission into the halls of Congress. If
they are refused, it will,then be an open
question whether the members thus
elected are not as much the Congress
OF the country as those who presume to
sit without them, and whether the
President would not be justified in re-
cognizing them as an essential element
OF the legislative department of the
Government, and, as such, indispensa-
BILE to the rightful exercise of power on
the part ofthat department.
This programme, thus detailed, is as
much as to say that another collision
is imminent, n likelihood that we do
not credit for moment. We know not
what may grow out of the Phila-
delphia Convention. We thorough
ly distrust its animus, and the
antecedents of those who will
compose it in great part are open
to the liveliest suspicion, but that it
will attempt in the end such coup a. |
ctat as our correspondent would seem
to anticipate, is altogether impossible. |
No! the South has had enough of that
sort OF thing, and so have their North !
ern allies. The loyal States would fire
up at such manifestation just rs thew
did at the firing on Sumter. The tenn
per of the country was never more
firmly set against disloyalty than now.
1t never was more determined that the |
loyal people shall he the dominant ele-
ment, and that the disloyal element
shall abide, not in part, but in whole,
the arbitrament of the war.
-$S%
IT is known to many of our readers
that a controversy is now going on be-
tween John B. Baldwin and John Mi
nor Bolts, as to certain proposition
made by Mr.. Lincoln to the former in
1861, and through him to the Union
men of the Virginia convention. That
proposition was, to vacate Fort Sumter
in case the Virginia convention adj
jOurned sine die. Baldwin IL saeuos did |