The Cecil Whig. [volume] (Elkton, Md.) 1841-current, 1868-08-08
AriStOCraCy.

While the Copperhead party claims to be
democratic in its principles and practices
when preaching to the laboring masses,
careful examination of its history proves it
to have been the only hope and sole rell'
ance of the aristocratic class Of the country.
For years before the rebellion, the aristo'
cratic slave lords moulded and manipulated
that party to their purposes. At the break
ing out of the rebellion, not man OF that
class who did not belong to what had long
been mistermed Democratic party-the
name being used to disguise the object OF its
leaders.
The object of the rebellion, openly avowed
by the Yanceys, Rhetts, Tombs and Wig
falls, was to secure permanent control OF
the Government to an aristocracy based on
land and slaves. There was nothing like
Democracy in the State Government Of
South Carolina, and yet it was classed as
the banner State ofthe Democracy. Where
ever you found a slave lord, owning large
tracts of land and large number of ne
groes, spurning the laboring classes as mud
stills, you found him exerting powerful in
Auence in political affairs, and invariably
member of the so called Democratic party.
They despised and kept aloof all laboring
men, assuming that lordly superiority which
slave owning had taught them. If we look
through our own State, we find all that class
of men, who aped aristocratic ways, falling
into the Democratic party after the dissolu-
ton of the old Wing party. Our mechanics
who have been employed in the slave coun,
ties of this State, on both shores of the bay,
long before the rebellion broke out, can
answer for the aristocratic and nabob spirit
Of the men who held full sway in those parts,
owning all the land and negroes.
Every one of these men belonged to the
Democratic party when the shareholders Of
South Carolina commenced the rebellion,
and every man of them took sides with the
rebellion and against their flag and country.
They fought and labored that slavery might
be permanently exalted, and republican
government be superseded completely and
firmly by the land owning and man. owning
class. Was there particle Of genuine de-
mocracy in the principles or practices Of
these men? of that pure democracy which
declares that government is by the people
and tor the people? These men, welded to
their love of privileged classes, are as bitter
Against the republican principles ofthe Union
en- as ever the royalists of the Old World
y s.against popular rights. While every eff:
q : the Republican party is to place the
emit more entirely and securely in the
the people, by extending the cleo
hise, and educating the masses by
-. N common schools, the greatest ef-
forts Of the Copperhead Democracy are dead
against these two fundamental principles Of
true popular and Democratic government.
How long will laboring men shut their eyes
to these obvious truths that the noble strug.
gle made by the Republican party, and still
being triumphantly pushed by that party Of
progress, has always been in the interest of
the working classes, the oppressed and down
trodden, and against the arrogance, violence
and aristocratic pretensions of that class,
which before the rebellion impudently con.
tended that slavery was blessing, and the
normal condition of whole race, that re.
publican government on this continent was
dedicated to slavery, and not to freedom,
that liberty had its true definition in
s's privileged class to control
,or by absolute ownership Of