Year: 1859

part of history; he who will can read it
there. Suffice it to say that it has been long
ago conceded that that Constitution was op-
posed to the will of an immense majority of
the people of Kansas. and that when it was
submitted to the vote of the people of that
Territory there was found to be a majority
of 10000 votes against it. All this was no.
torious fact when the case came up for ad-
judication by Congress, and yet President
Buchanan and his advisers, without consult
ing in any manner the great National Demo-
cratic party, threw the whole weight of the
! government into the scale in favor of the rat
| ihcation of a Constitution known to be re-.
pugnant to the people. In the words of the
National, che proposed the transient negation
of political doctrine to accomplish the de-
molition of sectionalsm and the triumph of
the Union" He not only proposed it, but
almost carried it out; and he was only saved
from shameful defeat or from an honest
avowal Of error by the insidious English bill,
framed to catch the vulgar which professes
]
one hand, on the other claims to be no sub
mission at all, and which in fact was mere
bribe for votes in favor of the obloxious
Constitution, and little hole provided out
of which our magnanimous President and
his sapient advisers might creep-a blind and
nothing more. And in view of all this the
National is impudent enough to advise us
that History is full of examples Of indivd-
ual heroism which the people of Kansas
would do well to initiate; where the lives of
different men and whole legions have been
offered up to save an army" coupled with
considerable more trash to like purport.
What great necessity existed, l ask, that the
self government of the people of Kansas
should have been sacrificed, as it was at
tempted to be? Suppose Anti Lecomptonism
had secured few more Democratic votes in
Congress and rejected the Lecompton Consti-
tuition, leaving it to the people to form an
other, would that have endangered "the peace
Of the cowtry?" l trow not think that
even the National will hardly be rash enough
to put forth this hypothesis, although it sug-
geSts it. think that the country would
have thereby been pacified instead of
disturbed, and that the Union savers whom
the National represents, would have shown
their patriotism to have been really sincere
by supporting this paci6catory course


The National thinks that Senator Douglas
"should have been less inhexible in his advo.
cacy of distractions" Does that journal for
get that our forefathers fought for absrac-
tions? Does it not know that only uniutcl-
ligent masses neglect distractions, and that
upright, earnest, intelligent men generally
take their stand upon just such so called ab
stractions ms that of self government, involv
ed in the Kansas controversy? The fate of
parties and of nations often lies bound up in
just such little abstraction or mighty prin-
ciple, call it which you will, as the one which
Senator Douglas took his stand on


l ask, when the people of Kansas clamored
for free expression of their will upon the
Constitution under which they were to be
governed 10y what right should they be
asked, in the words of the National, "to in
provise n Hegira further westward" ito
link their fortunes with Brigham Young and
his horde of zealots," Sacrifice themselves to
promote the public veal" Who gave the
National. who gave the Administration par.
ty the right to ask this at their hands The
National acknowledges that they were
"mainly right in the abstract which, due
allowance being made for party bias, means
that they were right-reelaiming a right
then ask what faction it is, what base sectional
faction is it that demands this needless and
uncalled for sacrifice at their hands?


The fact is that Senator Douglas and that
portion of the Democratic party that stands
with him, stand upon a principle--one en-
grated upon our Federal Constitution and
eternal as the Rock of Ages The foundation
of his opponents is the mere caprice or the
cold calculation of the President and his par
ticular friends. They are strong in the pres
ent possession of power. They are strong in
large Southern support given as a consid-
Grafton for the Southern sectional bias of the
Administration. But they have confessedy
abandoned abstract principle at the call of
what the National chooses to term political
eXpediency" and the result is that the boast
ed Administration Democracy has become
and is sectional to all intents and purposes.
1t is in vain then that its organ calls upon
Douglas men to beware where they stand,
lest they fall" Well may the Douglas men
retort the caution back upon their opponents
When the Democratic party unvaryngy
stood upon fixed democratic principles, when
it stood by such paltry as distractions popular
sovereignty, who was it that supported and
sustained the party, and brought it through
every battle, and that in the very teeth of
the base slander that it was party sold to
slavery? What class of men was it that
brought the party through the late glorious
contest when Jane Buchanan was elected to
the seat he now occupies? The Democratic
party has ever stood by the constitutional
rights of the South, and where did that par.
ty ever most need support, and where did it
most generously receive it? The South has
ever sustained the party, and "divil thank
it, as the Irishman says, because when the
South stood by the Constitution and the par
ty she stood by her own property, her
own institutions, her firesides and her homes
ba n1 1.,lo l,,t