Year: 1868

seymour will be a repetition of poor Pierce,
and the history of the present campaign will
renect many points in the campaign Of 1862.
rlerce was sort of political panacea. Anti
slavery agitation had gone very far, the ma
ton was uneasy in considering what fruit that
agitation might bear, and the common sense OF
the country was unanimous that the fanatics
must be put down as the first condition OF
tranquility. Pursuing that thought, the demo-
Gratis would not trust themselves to the best
brain in their party, because its owner seemed
| to yield to the influence of the common ten
| dency of Northern thinkers against the peculiar
institution. In their anxiety to have sound
conservative they were content that he should
be dummy, and so it was that poor Pierce
was put up. The whole country took the
democracy at its word, in the common hope for
quiet, and Pierce was chosen. He recognized
the idea that gave him his place when in his
inaugural he hoped that "no sectional, fanati-
cal or ambitious excitement might again
threaten the durability of our institutions"
But poor Pierce and the country had different
ideas of political peace. People wanted
peace that held the balance justly between ex-
tremes; but Pierce and the engineers who ran
him wanted peace that repressed Northern
agitation and gave free field to the slave
owners. Slavery then, of its own volition,
frstreopened the agitation it had SO tearfully
deprecated, and thus gave the impulse that
ended in the war. 1t demanded the repeal of
the compact Of 1920 against slavery, known as
The Missouri Compromise. The nation had
stilled for a time the agitation against slavery
and slavery used the truce to no better purpose
than to open an agitation that the nation could
not calm by any peaceful means. And in all
that Pierce was only the tool of the Southern
radicals, who had swindled the nation in the
Presidential contest by pretending that they
only wanted to be let alone.


In putting Seymour forward the democracy
again deprecates the disturbed condition and
pretends that its most earnest desire is to
assure the safety of the people by restoring
the supremacy of civil government in the whole
land; and the people again seem disposed to
accept its declarations as sincere and to trust



But the campaign puts on the old appearance,
and we see in the threats of democratic
leaders-in the words, the arguments, the very
tone they use--the danger looming Ia the
future that they construe peace always in
favor Of the South, always in the sense that
Southern men may choose to give it. In the
administration Of Pierce they reopened the
contest by destroying compact that had
settled the dispute in former years. In the
administration of Ssymour--if it is his fate to
have one--the democracy viii reopen the
issues Of the war by the attempt to erase from
our laws what the North has written down as
the fundamental condition of settlement We
do not mean the reconstruction laws; they
are but the waste rhetoric Of radical rage
The people have given them up and will be
content to see them formally set aside, as
practically they always must be in any attempt
to govern the South honestly and justly. The
people want no pledges that Southern men
will never vote this way or that way. Earnest
wisdom never demands q ridiculous or i'm
practicable guarantee. The people are willing





feats, It's bloody fields and impoverished
cities, satisfied that the war is the best
guarantee against war-content to believe that
ifw cannot trust ten States in sacred promises
there is no remedy.


For the Congressional enac.ments of the
radical RHYME the people care not. The
democrats may sweep them away and wei
come. But it is otherwise with what the war
has written in the constitution. The cdicts by
which slavery has been abolished and the
suffrage placed on q just basis have received
the assert Of the whole people, and must stand.
But to the Southern leaders these are analo-
gous to or worse than the compact by which
a limit was fixed to slavery. They fret
equally against these enactments and murmur
their dissatisfaction more or less distinctly.
Democracy, that raises its voice in the South
now and demands the notification Of all the
laws in regard to the South but these-and
murmurs at these--wll go further when it is
no longer suppliant for popular favor, but
sees in the White House President who is
not only its own choice but its own creature.
Then it will 90 so much further that we shall
have an opportunity to see whether il is
possible to revive Southern slavery in tho
absence of laws forbidding it, Southern
aggression will stop at nothing less, and
Seymour will be its tool, as Pierce was. Our
future under the democracy lies in thai
direction.


further troubles from rowing bands OF Indians
IN Kansas The gcepe OF the last rumor Ia tho