The weekly clarion. [volume] (Jackson, Miss.) 1863-1882, 1870-07-07
What am Old Line Wing has 10
Say ON the Proposition 10 Sell
Him Out 10 the Ames-
ReVeIS Party.

Editor Clarion The frequency of the
appeals of the Pilot to Old Line Wings to
make common cause with the party of pro-
gress leads me to suspect that they desire
our adhesion, and that if we prefer to stand
aloof they will not take it amiss If we make
public the reasons and sentiments by which
we are influenced.
! So far from having any feelings in unison
with yours, Mr.. Pilot, l must confess that
| feel a sense of degradation at the thought
that any man whose sense of honor and pa
triotism once led him to the standard of
Henry Clay could for lucre abandon his
cause, his country, and become the tool of
greedy, plundering adventures.
The Wing party loved the Union and
fought long and well against the political
heresy of secession, and this record of the
party is produced as evidence that utilization
with radicalism is natural proper and con-
sistent.
What Union did we love? That Union
based upon the Constitution which was
framed by the actors in the revolution of '76
and which in every essential has been de-
stroyed by the corruption of the Radical
party. AS Wings we knew no section and
we gloried only in the national honor; we
adopted the language of our leader and felt
only for the National glory. Such glory as
Jackson, Hull and Perry acquired. The
Wing party was the soul of honor and gath
cred within its ranks all whose exalted pa
triotism led them to echo with admiration
the scntiment-"I would rather be right
than President"-and whose scorn for repu-
diaf Of off ai,,Is
ces of the vulgar, brought them to defeat
under the cry of the Bank Aristocracy.
The Union we adored has been destroyed
by perjured Congress. The powers of the
departments of the government have been
usurped by corrupt partizan, rump parlia-
ment. The sentiment of national honor
which animated the older Wings has with
you degencrated into sectional hate and
tyranny. The national glory we coveted
was found at Algiers, Lundy's Lane and up
on the waters of Lake Erie. That which
you covet is to be found in the wholesale
degradation and extinction of all pride and
patriotism of the people. That love of coun-
try which actuated the Wing party evinced
by the utterance of Clay, choosing to be
right rather than be President, you have
surplanted by the universal mania to pros
titute character and stoop to any debasement
in order to procure office. That pandering
to vulgar prejudices which the wisest and
best men in the purer days of the republic
censured in the Jeffersonian Democracy and
against which the Wing party has ever pre-
sented the front of opposition is now raised
by you to an extreme from which Jefferson
himself would have recoiled in horror and
dismay.
l will not insult true Wing by asking
him what principles, what sentiments, what
feelings of pride in the past, what of hope
in the future he holds in common with these
agrarian refcrmers and subverters ofsocial
order in the State, but / may ask him for
the grounds upon which he bases such ex-
pectations, and am answered by the asser
ton reiterated over and oyer again, that we
and the Wings both opposed secession. The
last is true but the first part of the assertion
is false. They are of that school of polite
ians of which Wendell Phillips, Giddings and
Hale were the chieftains. and who, while
Yancey and Rhett denounced the Union as
a rope of sand, assaulted it in the North as a
league with death and covenant with hell.
They are the brood of these V1pers and
blind with their virus. They formed at the
North a sectional party. The seceders at
the South formed another. They were an
mated by a common sentiment of hostility
to the Union, but while the one desired its
for the preservation of constitu-
tional liberty, the other was determined to
overthrow it prompted by envy, malice and
avarice. While as Wing 1 disapproved of
the policy, never doubted the devotion of
the Democracy to the principles of constitu-
tional freedom, these adventures were new
err known even to possess a regard for a
obligation. They advocated
no principles they originated no measures
of national polity. Their mission was to
attack and assail. To overthrow the gov
eminent as established, to substitute equali-
ty for Iiverty, and the viii of the mob for
written Constitution.
OLD LINE WING.