The Sweetwater enterprise. (Sweetwater, Tenn.) 1869-187?, 1869-11-18
Our Responsibility,


"The Gainesville Tobacco Leaf says:
1--WE cannot be too powerfully impressed
by the Importance of the constitutional
convention soon to be called, to represent
the people of Tennessee and to carry out
their views in altering and reforming the
organic law of the State. We connot too
often remember, nor too powerfully feel,
that upon us is devolved the whole re-
sponsibility of this great work, so preg-
nant with good, if it be we'll done; so
traught with future woes if it be perform
ed without a proper spirit of conciliation
and moderation. With us the ballot box
is often a substitute for revolutions
remedy for evils which, mot her countries,
would require the keen blade of a bloody
civil strife for their correction.
The election of a convention to change
the organic law of the State is always a
kind of revolution. The people, the foun-
tain of power, who alone have the right of
revolution, demand to have returned to
their " hands The insignia of power.
Their will and their pleasure is the only
limit to their authority, within the re-
strictions imposed by the constitution of
the United States. 1t is too often the
case in revolution, that those who enter
the struggle for a triumph of principles,
lose sight of their object, and continue the
contest under the hatred and the prejudice
]engendered in the heat of the strife, long
after their principles have been establish
ed. In bloodloss revolution at the ballot
box, as well as in the sanguinary strife Of
civil discussions, it often happens that pro-
scription and oppression follow success.
In the first flush of triumph, when zeal is
no longer retrained by opposition, when
| moderation, and calm determined effort,
| have given way to fierce exultation and
shouts Of victory, and the weak and de-
feated are at the mercy Of the strong and
triumphant, there is great danger that all
bounds of reason and moderation will be
swept away, and all barriers of prudence
and justice hurled down, and the struggle
for principles changed into a made cru
SADIE for punishment and revenge.
There is great danger then, that the
calm and the moderate, leaders in the
strife, will be thrown aside, and the shall
low and the reckless, who alone can out
strip thc multitude in the fefceness of
their wrath, invested with the leadership.
Men of calm judgment and moderation
too often then endeavor in vain to stem
and turn back the tide.
We have just passed through an election
in Tennessee, which has relieved US of q
crushing oppression, a grinding despotism,
which exceeded in its tyranical measures,
and its impudent assumption of power
anything that we had ever before conceiv-
cd, or deemed possible.
Acts of oppression, and scenes of tyran-
ny such as we have not yet forgotten, and,
we fear, such as it trauscends human pow,
err to forgive, Supplied and crushed us
during that period. Now it is proposed
to call a convention for the purpose of un-
doing the work Of our oppression. 1t
must appear to every one that this is a
work requiring great care and patient re-
Election, moderation and clearness of judg-
ment.
| We should remember that passion and