New national era. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1870-1874, 1872-09-12


full apprehension in the public mind that if
the Tammany and rebel Democracy should
succeed in electing their candidate to the
Presidency, there will be mighty effort
made to pay the rebel debt, or at least for
rebel property destroyed, to pension rebel
soldiers, to compensate rebel masters for
their slaves, and to re-establish, in some
shape, system of slavery. This design has
been substantially admitted by many promi-
nent Southern men and leading Democratic
papers, and is but family denied at the North.
1t is true Mr.. Greeley has mildly repudated
any such purpose on his part, and some of
his adherents claim that the thirteenth, four
teenth, and fifteenth amendments eflectually
prohibit it, and triumphantly ask show are
we going to do it F" in the face of this prohi-
bition, and defy any one to explain how the
Democratic party can get over these amend
ments.
To those who do not well remember the
history of the Democratic party, and how
often it had trampled the Constitution under
foot, or evaded its requirements, these
amendments might seem an insurmountable
obstacle to the payment of the rebels for
their losses, and giving them again the power
to control the actions and appropriate the
labor of their former slaves. But careful
observers of public events will find that the
Constitution has never been permitted to
stand in the way of any purpose the Demo-
cratic party had set its heart upon Sustained
by public sentiment, or without regard to
public sentiment, as the case might be, that
party has gone on from one outrage against
law and justice to another, constituting the
Constitution as they understood it, and
always understanding it as their partisan in
terests required.
The Democratic party is now what it has
always been. Democratic principles are the
same. Democratic policy is unchanged.
Even on the subject of slavery the party en-
tertains the same views, and are governed by
the same purposes as before its overthrow by
the Republican party. The system is as
as dear to them as ever. They believe
in its justice and necessity as religiously as
ever. They have never frankly accepted the
new order of things, though eXpediency has
compelled them to acquiesce in it as a
" finality" until they can regain the legality
to restore it, by striking from the Constitu-
ton the amendments, repeating the Civil
Rights acts, bringing back the good old times
of fugitive slave laws and bred Scott de-
cisiOns.
The Democratic doctrine upon the subject
of negroes and negro slavery, whatever
erpediency may compel them to profess, is
embraced in the infamous bred Scott decision
rendered by Chief Justice fancy, of the
United States Supreme Court, and concurred
in by Associate Justices (See Greeley's
American Conflict, vol. 1, page 253) Wayne,
of Georgia; Nelson, of New York, (still on
the bench y Grier, of Pennsylvania Daniel,
of Virginia; Campbell, of Alabama, and
Catron, of Tennessee. In delivering the de-
cision of the Court shortly after Buchanan's
Inauguration, Chief Justice fancy stated the
question before them to be: Whether
(they, the negroes) compose a portion Of this
people, and are constituent members Of this sor-
ereignty?" And then thus answers the ques-
ton:
eve think they are not, and that they
are not included, and were not intended to
be included under the word citizens in the
Constitution, and can, therefore, claim no
rights and privileges which that instrument
provides for and secures to citizens of the
United States. On the contrary, they were
at this time considered as Il subordinate and
inferior class of beings, who had been subju-
fa1 hU 40
emancipated, or not, yet remained subject to
their authority, and had no rights or priv
ileges, but such as those who held the power,
and the Government might choose to grant
Them"
The vote Of every Democratic member OF
Congress against all the amendments to
abolish slavery, enfranchisc the colOred
man, and secure equal civil and political
rights to all classes of citizens, and against
every measure designed to protect the col
ored race in their newly-acquired rights, OF
against rebel, Ku-kluX Outrages, their at
tempts under Johnson's reconstruction acts
to re-establish slavery, their uniform and
bitter luminosity to negroes, the approval OF
such letters as Jerry Blacks, and, above all,
their nomination of an avowed secessionist,
and man who publicly declared that he was
in favor of paying rebel masters for their
slaves; all those facts continue with the
sentiment of the Southern rebels, constitutes
evidence as strong as proofs of Holy Writ
that the Democracy still entertain the doc
trine proclaimed in the above decision of the
Supreme Court of the United States.
Such still being the opinions of the great
majority Of the Democratic party, and be.
lieving, as they everywhere proclaim they
do, that the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fiji
teenth amendments were procured by fraud
and are therefore null and void, it will re-
quire very little ingenuity to show "ho,c the,
are going to do it," Of the dispositions o.
the Tammany-Greeley secession Democracy
to pay the rebel debt, compensate rebe
slave-masters, pension rebel soldiers, ant
practically restore slavery, whatever Mr.
Greeley may intend, we are sure there car
be no doubt. And in this, as in less grave
matters, it will be found that, "where there's
will, there's way And the grea
questions to be decided is what that way is