The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1868-10-03


whole. To Mr.. Delmar is due the credit of
calling public attention to the other set of ac-
counts, stating its nature, aud giving the
figures. The grand "hop'' on Thursday, and
the total silence of all the Republican journals,
from first to last respecting the Treasurer's
receipts and expenditures suppressed by Mr..
Wells and brought to light by Mr.. Delmar
are confession that the statements of ths
latter cannot be successfully controverted
Even the redoubtable Wells gives it up in
despair.
The Republican Party and its Mission
General Grant.
FROM The NJ Y. Herald.
'No further extension of slavery" was the
grand issue upon which the Repu blican party
came into power, and the first definite express
sion OF this grand idea was given by the Buf-
falo Free-soil Convention of 1S4S upon which
Martin Van Buren, and Charles Francis Adams
were placed in the field as the Presidential
ticket of the Free soil party. The object OF
Van Buren,, which was achieved, was the de-
feat of Cass in requital for the prh- slavery
juggling of the regular Democratic conventions
OF 1874 and lS4S, ny which "Little Van" was
cut out OF what he considered his vested right,
in another chance for second term in the
regular Democratic line of succession. Thus
the Southern slaveholding oligarchy in engt-
neering his rejection in IA and again in AS,
at Baltimore, made of Van Buren, a revengeful
Samson, who, with his arms about its main
supporting pillars, pulled their temple of
Dsgon down about their ears.
Down to the year lS4S Northern opposition
to Southern slavery was too violent, impracti-
cable, and revolutionary in its demands to make
much headway. In denouncng the Union with
the "slave power" as ga league with DEATH"
and the Constitution as "a covenant with
hell, " and in denouncing a separation of the
Union in order to rid the North of the sin aud
scandal of slavery, the original abolition party
of Garrison, Tappan Phillips, and their asso-
ciates and followers, repelled alike the lovers
of the Union and the devotees of law and
order in the North while furnishing all the
capital required by Calhoun and his disciples
for the founding of secession and Southern
| Confederacy party in the South. But Martin
Van Buren, in lS4S, upon his practical and
attractive platform that thenceforward slavery
should be shut out of the territories of the
United States, introduced the wedge which
split the Democratic party iu twain at the
Charleston Convention of 1860, and precipi-
tated by fire and sword the extinction of the
domineering Southern oligarohy, with their
peculiar institution
The grand idea, we say, then, upon which
the Republican party was organized in 1854
first came in positive, practical, and impress
sive shape from Martin Van Buren, as an indie
pendent Presidential candidate in 164S. The
|
1850 gave check to this free soil agitation,
which enabled poor Pierce to walk over the
| Presidential course in 1852; but in his repeal
Of the Missouri Compromise, which was part
Of Clay's adjustment of 1850 poor Pierce
reopened the box of Pandora and the door for
the revival in infinitely greater strength Of
| Van Burens free soil movement. Thus, upon
the platform OF 'no further extension Of
slavery Fremont would have been over
whelmipgly elected President in 1856 but for
the third party movement of Fillmore, which
crippled the Republican organization in all the
free States and assisted in suppressing it by
terrorism in all the South. In 1860, however,
this order of things was reversed by the
Charleston Convention. The Democratic party
was torn to pieces, aud from its Northern
fragments and the floating materials of the dis
banded Know Nothing party the Republican
party of 1860 came into power as on Northern
| whirlwind, the free soil platform of Lincoln
Ike that OF Fremont, being precisely the Van
Buren, platform OF lS4S-"no further extension
! OF slavery"
The original mission OF the Republican
party, then, was simply to hold slavery to the
ground which it occupied and to provide ths
no more slave territories or slave States should
exist in the Union. Hence the Rebellion upon
the heel of Lncoln's election. The SOtltt
Carolina chivalry were armed and ready for il
in 1851 after the admission, in 1850, of Califor-
mia as free State, which broke the Southern
balance of power in the Senate; but South
Carolina was induced to wait for the co-opera
tion of the other cotton States, and she GO
them in 1860 and 1861. From this point the
original idea of the Republican party-f
check against the extension of slavery
rapidly ripened under the war into Lincolnt
emancipation proclamation-a military act
which in the outset he thought would be al
futile as 'the Pope's bull against the comet
Since then, with the suppression of thu
Rebellion, we have had the absolute abolition
OF slavery and an interdict against its reviva
engrafted upon the Constitution itself. Here
then, one would think the mission of the Re
publican party at an end. But with the tina
extinction OF slavery and the Southern slave
holding ohgarohy, this new party OF the Nortl
assumed new mission in the work of recon
struotion. The programme adopted for thu
work in 1866 was that of the Constitutions
amendment, article fourteen. Upon this plat
form they swept the North, from ocean Il
| he - I'D Tohn