The tri-weekly standard. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1866-1868, 1867-01-01

At the session of the Southern Re
publican Association, held at theil
rooms in Washington on the 18th O.
Dec, 1866, the following resolutions and
memorial were adopted as the sense Of
this association
MEMORIAL.
To the Senate and House Of Represen.
tatives Of the United States in Con-
gress assembled:
Humbly complaining to your honor
able bodies, your memoralists, ON behalf
of the members of the organization
known as the "Southern " Republican
Association" respectfully present the
accompanying resolutions, and ask that
they may be given careful considera-
tion, and action adopted in accordance
with them. Your memoriaiists will can
didly confess that they do not claim to
represent the sentiments of a ma jority
of those who have hitherto been enti-
tied to vote at the elections in what
are known as the "non-reconstructed
States" but they do claim to speak in
the name and behalf Of those who stood
by the national cause through the dark
est days of the rebellion, of those who
still regard the preservation of the I'm
ion az of paramount Importance. Our
views can best be expressed by brief
narrative of facts
For thirty years prior to 1860 there
was in the Southern States a constant
ly increasing and growing party known
indifferentIy as Nullifiers, States-rights
men, Disunionists, and Secessionists.-
They held the doctrine that the United
States was not nation, a government,
nor Union, but a compact, an agency,
or mere association of independent SOW
ereign States that there was no ma
tional citizens or people, but that para
mount allegiance was due to the States;
that as through the agency of conven-
tions the Union had been formed, so
through the same form it might be dis
solved These pernicious doctrines,
tending to anarchy and the distraction
of social order, assumed threatening
forms in the notification movements of
1881 and 1882, upon the slavery issues
of 1850, the territorial and African
slave-trade issues of later period, and
finally eliminated in the reasonable
conspiracy of 1860. .
We fully appreciate the value of the
maxim that error of opinion may be
tolerated while reas on is LETT free to COM
bat it - but when the question of the
perpetuation of human slavery became
the all-engrossing error of the day, rea-
son was not left free to combat the
most revolving dogmas, even though |
they threatened the life Of the nation,
if the political creed was propagated in |
the name of slavery. Liberty ofspeech |
and of the press were no longer toler-
ated the mails were closed against in
terdicted documents, and every consti-
tutional guarantee in favor of liberty
was disregarded. Those whose teach
ings all tended to disunion, and who
who scarcely concealed their purpose,
adroitly managed to get the entire con-
troll of the State governments, TO send
few but extreme men to Congress, and
through Cabinet officers selected from
the same school to FIJI almost every
Federal Office in the South with men
who at heart had no regard for their
constitutional oaths, and who did not
recognize the Constitution which they
Were sworn to support as the supreme
law Of the land. The possession of al