The Portland daily press., 1868-08-11
The Democratic Stampede.
ANOTHER PROMINENT DEMOCRAT FOR GRANT
AND COLFAX.


AND CoLFAx.
George M. Weston OF Bangor has for years
been among the most prominent leaders of the
Maine Democracy Twice he has been their
candidate for Congress from the Fourth Dis
trict On the Sd inst. he addressed a letter to
DR.. J. M. Worth, of ASHORE, n. c., an old
personal friend, from which we make the fol-
lowing extract, feeling sure that its arguments
will strike our readers perfectly conclusive:
But in practically dealing with affairs, we
must take things as we ind them. This recon-
struction policy of Congress, strenuopsly as /
resisted if, and obnoxious as it is to YOU. is an
accomplished fact. The effects of it NAV be
modified by events and the policy itself NAV
be softened, with the gradual subsistence of the
passions connected with the late struggle. But
overthrown it cannot be, except by revolution,
and another civil war, and the issues OF the
pending Presidential canvass are so made up
as to present the question, necessarily over
shadowlng all others, whether the country is
ready for so desperate remedy as that for any
grievances which exist.
The candidate OF the Democratic party for
the Vice Presidency, and who, If elected to
that office will find between himself and the
supreme executive power only the frail barrier
of a single life, in his letter of the Both of
June last. declared:
''There is but one aUdy to restore the govern
naent and the Constitution, and that is for the
President elect to declare these acts the recon-
Structaon dctsI null and Uoad, compel the army to
undo ats otsurpdtions at the SOUTH disperse the
cdrpet-6dg State governments, dttoao the aohtte
people to reOrgdfaize their OsCn governments ana
elect Senator's and Representatives. We must
haze a President aoho aoM execute the aoU Of the
people By trdn.pling into dust the usarpation
of Congress k1ooocn as the Reconstruction acts. L
repedt that this is the real and only question
aoiich oce should al2oW to control as. eoish to
stand before the Contention apon this issue, but
it is one actich embraces eoerytiing Of ualue in
its large and comprehensive results"
Mr.. Blair does not overstate the magnitude
of the consequences involved in his presenta-
ton as a candidate for the Vice Presidency
and contingently for the Presidency, on such
an issuel as that. Indeed, it is impossible for
anybody to overstote them. And if any
doubt could remain as to the purpose of the
leaders of a party nominating such a man and
on the basis of such declarations, it is re-
moved by the platform which they have adopt
ed, in which the Reconstruction acts are de-
nounced as Revolutionary stitutioaal, null
and ooid thereby expressly justifying and in
vting revolutionary resistance to them. AS
we now know, these incendiary words had
fitting origin in their committee on resolutions,
in Gen. Wade Hampton of S. c., and he has
told us how they were received in that body I:
when proposed that, every single member of
the men Of the North came torward aud said
they aoould CARRY 1T FORWARD TO THE
END"
What that lend" is, it requires no prophet
to foretell. New hecatombs of young men
slam IN battle, new confagrations of cities and
ruined and finally dismembered country.
The assumption of the Democratic platform,
that the Reconstruction acts are null and
UOld, has no shadow of fact or law to rest up
on. Left as the Southern States were, with
out any civil governments which could be rec
ognized as such, consistently with the result OF
the late if IS Main that nplaSa tho NJ
reorganization was commenced within them
by spontaneous popular movements, which
were not possible without dangerous political
connections, it must have been commenced by
some power outside of Them and that power
could be no other than the Government of the
Union. SO President Lincoln understood it,
so President johnson understood it, and he
proceeded accordingly to prescribe reorganiza-
ton, regulating by executive proclamation
who should vote and who should be excluded
from voting IN electing members of conven-
tions to frame constitutions, and in ratifying
or rejecting such constitutions when framed
Congress has done no more than that and ex.
erclsed no other power than that and certain
ly II that power existed anywhere in the Fed
eral Government, it existed in the laW-makipp
branch of it. Congress may not have exercised
this power wisely, but their rightful authority
in the premises is clear and unquestionable
and those who denOunce their acts as ''nuH and
cold and counsel revolutionary resistance to
know not what they do, or bold and bad men.
fatally bent on mischief
1t is not in this second civil war, into which
Mr.. Blair and the Democratic platform seek
to entice them, that the Southern States will
find remedy for the evils which they suffer.
White Immigration from Europe and the
North which peace and quiet will invite, the
higher rate of natural increase of
whites as compared with blacks the
diminution of the number of the dis
fraDcllS6d reSulflnU slowly lint ly
from death, and the early removal of disfran-
chsements which is assured by such move
ments as we have Just had reported from the
Legislature of Georgia, will before long change
the whole face of affairs. The antagonism of
races VIII Itself cease, when political contests
relative rights of races. The policy of Mr.. Blair
on the other hand, tends directly and inevita-
bly, to band and consolidate the blacks into
phalanx lmpenetrable upon every 'front.' 1
see unredeemed mischief in it, in all its as
poets. The'fag with which he marches at the
head of the Democratic column is the black
nag OF discord and civil war for the country
and war OF races for the South. The mass of
his misguided followers are honest aud we'll in
tentioned, but it is none the less true that 10
Is leading them in a broad and straight road to
ruin.
My hope is, that the sober and discreet men
OF the South. whose counsels, like yours would
have saved it from the late war, will now avail
to save It from this infinitely worse war at once
internal and external, portended by new rev.
olutlon,not so much originating your in section
where he justifying grievances are alleged to
exist, as instigated by political calculation else
where-a strange revolution, indeed. in behalf
of Southern rights, in which "the acarrnest men
are the men Of the North" who are seeking, not
the redress of wrongs, but the qualification OF
their lust of power, at the hazard of the ruin OF
Gro N wrsrox