New Orleans Republican. [volume] (New Orleans, La) 1867-1878, 1875-09-22
GOVERNOR AMEs AND STATE RIGHTS

may crumble and the most substantial
edifices fall in ruins.
There have been great battles in which
Titanic statesmen combat and conquer.
Principles are thereby established which
meet public approval, and of course at
tract the support of the pettifoggers. AS
these men who comprehend principles
relax in the care of public affairs the pet
tifoggers succeed them in the management
| of the party, and then commences their
| work of mischief In the exigencies of
political warfare they suppress principles
They barter them for nominations. They
surrender, and not unconmonly come to
oppose for the purpose of party ascend
ency the very principles upon which the
party was based. The political petifogger
despises his lineal knowledge. He SCOTS
at consistency of doctrine. He worships
success il it be secured by the device Of
fraud or intimidation.
We find the work of this insect in the
worm eaten and tumbling tenement of
Democracy. II afronts the rectangular
tenets Of the men who founded and built
the fabric, and the same political vermin
which have overthrow the structure
build their nests in the dry rot that they
have engendered. Among the most ex-
traordinary contradictions which the pet
tifogging Democracy have effected in the
principles of the founders of that party is
TO be found IN the opposition 20 the de-
mand OF Governor Alhes for federal aid
in executing the laws of Mississippi. We
now find the advocates Of State rights
claiming that case OF domestic VIC
'v-vr must ro .4Idto 0;.t 10 H. 5,..;5.,.c
ton of the President of the United STATES
before he can be required to furnish the
aid demanded. Shades Of Calhoun and
Of Mason! The Governor of State is,
then, satrap who must leave to an i'm
perial master the discretion to determine
whether he shall command or obey the
insurgents of the province.
So sacred was this obligation to bind
the whole power Of the Union to execute
the laws Of State that before the war it
was always relied on to protect the South
ern States against the ''dome site violence"
Of o servile instruction. No advocate of
State rights would have even relinquished
this right of demand, this exclusive dis
cretion on the part of the State TO deter
mine, and the Wing or ,Unionist who had
suggested the right of ". II. Seward or
Abraham Lincoln to judge whether the
demand of Southern Governor for aid
to suppress domestic violence" would
have been denounced as an abolitionist
and would forthwith have lost all the cen
fdence and custom Of an indignant pub
lie. II a principle be Of any value it
must be incapable OF inhioting injustice,
but if the temporary effect of its appli-
cation be injurious to those who profess
il, it must be borne with on every ground,
both of honor and of consistency.
The call for federal troops is not salts
factory to those who have assumed the
the Indian strategy of killing off the Re-
publican officers, and paroling the negro
voters on condition that they cast their
votes as advised by their employers in
future. Very we'll 1t may be granted
that the appearance of United States
troops will somewhat interfere with the
latter part of that programme. Suppose,
however, John Brown, consule John
Brown being President, the Governor of
Virginia had demanded federal aid. Under
the doctrine of the pettifoggers his reply
would have been CURLY "This gov
eminent does not regard the organization
of men seeking their natural liberty as
domestic instruction" 1t declines to in
tervene. Such would have been the
operation Of the federal discretion now
contended for. When such q case of do.
nestle instruction did actually occur, the
federal government sent without hesita.
ton or question force under Colonsl r.
E. Lee to suppress it. This was done as
an auxiliary force, and the prisoners cap
tured under that requisition for aid were
turned over to the State authorities for
trial.
1t is thus that pettifoggers to whom
.has been intrusted the representation of
a once powerful party have bartered away
and renowned every principle which once
constituted its creed. The principle of
the right of State to forego sin the last
resort of the mode and measure of re-
dress" was, in truth, the basis principle
assumed by the Democracy. 1t stood in
all their platforms. When the day came
that this principle was to be tested in the
right of the States to withdraw from the
Union as the conclusive exercise of their
statehood, the Yankee Democrats went
square back on their Southern brethren
and took service under the federalists or
Union men. These Yankee Democrats
took contracts and commissions under the
-government; they invaded Richmond,
Charleston, New Orleans; they furnished
all the substitutes; they loaned all
the money they could raise TO drag
back their ancient allies through the
breaches and over the battlements the
right of the States. They would do the
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