Year: 1860



 ment against the black republicans, whose aims and objects, in their course upon the homestead bill, Mr. Johnson exposes with maste4ly hand. m

 We could lay before our readers numer- ous highly flattering notices from different sections of the country, but our space will only permit us to give the following, which we extract from the Washington Consti- tuition:

 THE HOMESTEAD BILL.

 1t will be recollected that Senator R. w. Johnson during the late session of Con- gress, labored earnestly with Senator ] ofn- son, ot Tennessee, to perfect homestead bill.

 As heretofore framed, every bill of this nature has been opposed by the Senator from Arkansas and by the democratic party: lst, because it was radical abandonment of our long and well.tested system of public land laws, and the inauguration of new, reckless, and wasteful system; 20, because the changes proposed in our present system by the republican party, under the name of a homestead law" were designed for political effect; to convert all the public lands to their own political uses; to cut off rom the treasury and to use for abolition purposes two hundred millions of dollars; and to throw the public domain into the hands of the abolition aid societies, to be gwen as a premium, by quarter sections, to every abolitionist they could get to em- grate to the new territories, upon payment ot all his expenses of removal by the so- cieties.

 It was thus designed to rob the treasury of TWO hundred millions of dollars and inn pose that amount of additional taxation upon all the people of the United States, to tax North and South in order to subserve the ambition of political party and to ex- clude the South from all the new territoris, Tn order to prescribe and to destroy the slave property of the South, and to degrade the white people of the South by putting them and the negro race on an equal foot ing and common level

 All this was to have been done by the republicans under the name of the home stead bill, and under professed love of the poor and oppressed actual settler. The bill was fraud, as the republicans had framed it. The old settlers are as inde- pendent, proud, and honest people as ever lived, they scorn to be bribed; they are as fearless people as ever lived, they sleep without locks on their doors, their houses are the homes of hospitality to every passing stranger. The professed love for the actual settler was a fraud and falsehood. They proved it by their votes, as we will now show.

 Senator Johnson, of Arkansas, and Gov. Johnson. of Tennessee, labored hard to make g bill which should protect the set tier in all sections of the country; which should be relieved of its partisan political Eeatures; which should De consistent with, whilst 1t modified, our present system of land laws, and which should preserve in the treasufy for future use fair proportion of this great public wealth They suc- ceeded. Their bill was adopted, supported eRd passed, after full debate by the demo- cratic party in the Senate. The republican Senators saw that their objects were de- feated, and that their conversion of the great public domain into mere political party fund was exposed and frustrated, and they cursed the bill in their hearts. But they saw the bill was sound and a good one, and that it saved and protected the "actual settler" To vote against it would have been too bare-faced and shalneless, so they, too, voted for it.

 Their vote proves only that the bill was a wise and good one for every emigrant, and for all the high public interests. It proves, not that they wanted to befriend and protect the actual settlers in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, California, Oregon, and the territories, because they readily aban doned 1t whom the republicans in the House of Representatives struck out the Senate (Johnson) bill, which passed the Senate by over 30 majority, and reinserted their own political homestead bill.

 At the time they did this they knew that the President would veto 1t. The Presi- dent never hesitated to denounce the House bill from the beginning of the session, and the republicans knew it, and cannot deny it without falsehood, for they were expressly forewarned of it by democratic senators. Yet they rejected the Senate homestead bill, and inserted their own bill, which they knew would be vetoed; thus refusing to protect and befriend the settler, because they could not use him as an excuse and as a tool for the accomplishment of their own corrupt party ends.

 The bill passed the Senate on the report of the third conference committee, with nearly every objectionable feature in it., every republican Senator voting for it and few democrats. Those dem ocratic Sena- tors did not know the force of the great changes that had | n made in the bill and it is not believed that it could even have passed the Senate if Senator Johnson, of Arkansas, hsd been in his seat to have exposed the outrage, as he would certainly have done.

 We new publish in another column the speech of Senator R. w. Johnson, and the debate which preceded his speech upon the Pre- ident's veto. It will show the people of all sections how the public treasure Is to be used and wasted for political purposes. It will show, as consequence, how the re- pubiicans propose to waste the public treasure, having necessarily to impose new taxes iu the end to supply the place of the millions which they propose to appropriate annually from this source, and which they would wield against the constitutional property and rights of the weaker half of this Union. 1t will show that the republi- cans cared nothing for the hardy s'actual settler" of the new states and territories, and wore ready to sacrifice them, and did sacrifice them, so soon as their political objects were frustrated. It will show to the "actual setAgr" that he has been used kas stooi-pigeon by the fowler, and that, when the flock refused to alight, the fowler, in anger, turned dupon the stool-pigeon and shot it. ..t..-.-s

 The history of this bill will show all men that the power and the. wealth and treasure of this government, even to in- creased taxation. are to be used by an un- scrupulous party, in order to make war upon, and if possible destroy, the southern people. ...-

 The speech of Senator Johnson, of Ar kansas, is published just as it came from