The Manitowoc pilot. [volume] (Manitowoc, Wis.) 1859-1932, 1867-06-07
For tie Plot.
!" Free Speech.

:" Free Speech"
| laid down the last 7ribme-the Mani
towoc Tribune, Of ourse,-after reading its
leader under the above caption, with my
mind 10 delicious state of amazement.
The old sarcasm alone distinctly shaped it
self out of the maze: g consistency, thou.
art jewell and, feeling its force as l
never felt it before, | repeated to myself:
8 cocsistency, thou ART jewell
That paper cannot go further than in
the belief of the necessity of free speech
and discussion to the very safety Of the
Republic. 1t may be pushing the practice
under that belief to re-extreme, but it is
better perhaps that those fiery Sou.herners
should submit with an assinine patience to
the abuse which such men as Judge KELLY
can have the effrontery to pour out upon
them, than to express their dissatisfaction
in any manner. If riots are to be depre-
Gated. surely that which produces them is
to be more severely condemned If the
people Of Mobile are blameable, as they no
doubt are, for their forcible demurrer to
Judge KELLY's peculiar way Of pouring oil
! upon the troubled waters, how much more
SO is he who, processing to be on an errand
of Cancellation, protesting to desire the rapid
healing of old sores, proceeds to open and
probe and irritate them?
1t seems to me that, if there is one thing
which the speakers Of the Radical party
who are now canvassing. and are about to
canvass, the South should strive to do: it
is to tighten instead of add to the burdens
which they have already placed on the
Southern neck: to let the dead bury their
dead-leaving the concomitant circum-
stances of vanished issues, all memory of
the strife and bitterness of past days, with a
rapidly receding past. The course Of Judge
KELLY, so at variance with policy de-
sirous of amicabe reconstruction reveals a
desire to provoke the Southern people with
Just such riots, that Radical party capital
may be made of them. That party was
born of agitation and only /" lives by what
it feeds upon" But, nous aron sur anouton.
That article curiously illustrates that
what's sauce for the goose amt sauce for
the gander.
Among thousand minor cases of repres-
sion of free speech, and even of free opinion,
which occurred in the North during the
war, of gratuitous full suits of tar and
feathers, and perambulatory excursions on
fence rails, together with more numerous
forcible displays of U. S. bunting, two
cases, by the prominence in public life of
the victims, stand prominent-lasting mon
uments of rebuke to a party boasting free
speech as one of its fundamental tenets.
[ refer first to the deliberate expulsion Of
JESSE D. BRIGHT, of Indiana, from the
Senate of the United States, in February,
1862, for expressing the sentiments which,
representing minority in that body, he
honestly entertained and dared to express
upon an open question Of national policy.
Here was muzzliDg of free discussion, not
by an excitable, ignorant mob already
frenzied with abuse, but by the calm, de-
liberate proceeding Of two-t thirds majority
of the members of the Senate of the United
States! Between that body and the
rioters of Mobile and New Orleans, there is
only the difference of intellectual capacity
the animus and object was the same. The
more intelligent body, if the acts were flag
rantly wrong, was the greater criminal
Expelled from the Senate in which he was
the able exponent of the ideas of his con-
stituents, a minority, a vast minority, but,
even if wrong, none the less entitled to be
heard because his sentiments differed from
those Of the majority upon an important
question of national policy
The second was the trial and sentence of
CLEMENT L. VALLANDIGHAM, of Ohio, for
entertaining a similar honest difference Of
opinion from that Of the majority,-no
more heinous offense than that, and ser
fenced for it to confinement in Fort Warren
"a sentence which LINCOLN was too
humane to execute, and committed to trans
portation to congenial'' climes. A mild
sarcasm
Under the shadow of these monuments,
this party faunts its banners inscribed with,
e free speech - And again / say, * con-
sistency, thou ART JEWELL PTS.