Litchfield enquirer., 1868-08-20

F. MANY PLATFORM.
 Hon. George M. Weston, of Bangor. tw
 years ago was the Democratic candidate fo
 Congress in the Fourth District of Maine Y Now, though he has been opposed to tn
 reconstruction policy of Congress, he i
 not ready to follow the revolutionary lea
 ot Frank Blair. MT. Weston's position i
 admlrably defined in the following letts
 addressed by him to a personal friend a
 the South:
 Dr. J. ~: Wo,zh, Ashboro' ~. C.:
 DEAR SIR: During my visit of last Win
 ter to your State, observed with anxious attention every fact connected with the op
 efatlon of the reconstruction policy of Con
 gfess What saw and what heard confirm
 ca as you we'll know, that conviction of it's se
 rlous errors which constrained ma two
 years ago to unite in the effort to prevent
 IS adoption by the country. Witnessed.
 With pain and solicitude of which I rather
 restrained than exaggerated the expression to you, the spectacle, novel in the history
 or mankind, of State, the government of
 which had been placed in the hands of the classes of the least intelligence, and hay
 Ing the least interest in the maintenance or order and the advancement of material prosperity. All my reflections on the spot strengthened my belief that universal am nesty should have gone hand in hand with universal suffrage at the South, and that if the protectlon of the rights of the blacks required that they should be armed with the ballot, the protection of other rio1ts and interests required that the numerical ascendency of the whites should not he nullltied by disfranchisements and espec- lally not by such sweeping disfranchise- meats as are contained in the Reconstrnc- ton acts of Congress,
 but 1n practically dealing with affairs. we must take things as we find them. This heoonstructlon policy of Congress, strong ly as l resisted 1t, and obnoxious as it is fo you, IS an accomplished fact. The effects | of It may be modified by events and the policy itself may be softened. with the gradual subsistence of the passions conect- ed with the late struggle. But oyertbrown It cannot be, except by revolution and an- other civil war, and the issues of the pending Presidential canvass are so made up as to present the question, necessarily all others, whether the country IS ready for so desperate remedy as Inat, for any grievances which exist.
 The candidate of the Democratic Party for the Vlce-Presidency, and who, if elected to to that office, will find between himself and the supreme executive power only the fraiI barrier of single life, in his letter of the 30th of June last, declared:
 There IS but one way to restore the Gov ernment and the Consultation, and that is for the President elect to declare these acts (the Rec0nStrnctinn ao4AN ---7ll-----e, allow the white people to re- organize their own Governments and elect Senators and Representatives. We must have President who will execute the will of the people by trampling ln the dust the usurpations of Congress known as the Reconstruction acts. I repeat that this is the real and only question which we should allow to control us. I wish to stand be- fore the Convention upon this issue, but 1t is one which embraces every thing of val ue in its large and comprehensive results.
 MT. Blair does not overstate the magpi- tude of the consequences involved in his presentation as candidate for the Vice. Presidency, and contlngently for the Pres idency, on such an issue ls that. Indeed, it is impossible for anybody to overst;.te them. And if any doubt could r ,nalu as to the purpose of the leaders of d party nominating such a man and on the basis of such declarations, 1t Is removed by tne platform which they have adopted, i'll which the Reconstruction acts are denounced as revolutionary, unconstitutional. null and | void," thereby expressly justlfying and in viting revolutionary resistance to them. ! As we now know, these incendiary words had fitting origin In their committee on l resolutions, in Gen. Wade Hampton, of 1 South Carolina, and he has told us how they have been received in that body:
 "When I proposed that, every single member of the Committeeman tue warm- est men in 1t were the men of the North came forward and said they would curry u fo1ardrd to tke end.
 What that end is, requires no prophet to foretell New hecatombs of young men slain in battle, new confagrations of cities and ruined and finally dismembered country.
 The assumption of the Democratic plat form, that the Reconstruction acts are null and void,' and has no shadow of fact or law to rest upon. Left as the South ern States were, without any civil Govern ments which could be recognized as such, consistently with the result of the late war, 1t is plain that unless the work of reorgan- ization was commenced within them by spontaneous popular movements, which were not possible without dangerous polit- cal commotions, it must have been com menced by some power outside of them, and that power could be no other than the Government of the Union. So President Lincoln understood 1t. So President John son understood it, and he proceeded &C.,
 cordingly to prescribe reorganization, reg
 ulating by executive proclamation who
 should vote and who should be excluded
 from voting in electing members of con-
 ventlons to frame constitutions, and in rat
 flying or rejecting such constitutions when
 framed. Congress has done no more than
 that, and exercised no other power than that, and certainly if that power existed anywhere in the Federal Government, ii existed in the law-making branch of it. Congress may not have exercised this pow , CT wisely, but their rightful authority in the premises is clear and unquestionable } and those who denounced their acts 8. 6 null and void," and counsel revolutiona ry resistance to them are either thoughtles s persons who know not what they do, O : bold bad men, fatally bent on mischief.
 It is not in this second civil war into . which Mir. Blair and the Democratic plat - form seek to entice them, that the South ern States will find remedy for the evil . which they suffer. White immigration iron Europe and the North, which peace an : quiet will invite, the higher rate of natura s' increase of whites as compared with black