Franklin Repository

We earnestly appeal to the Union members of the legislature to give the bill providing for the adjudication and payment of military damages, a candid, dispassionate consideration, unprejudiced by any political complications which may have been thrown around it by violent partizans. The test oath reported in the bill, and which was unanimously accepted by the committee, is a fair one--just to the State and just to the loyal people; and to seek to impose needless and humiliating tests, striking at the mere political belief of the citizens on the one hand, or striving to exempt all from giving evidence of loyalty, so that Rebel and Union men could claim alike, on the other hand, make the sufferings of a despoiled people a mere political foot-ball for the amusement of ambitious legislative orators.

The measure is free from all political bearings. It applies to men of all parties: for all have suffered alike under rebel invasion; and if there be exceptions to the fidelity of our people during rebel rule in our midst, no fears need be apprehended, under Mr. Sharpe's restrictions, that such men can profit by it. The bill is urged with uncommon earnestness by the entire press and members of both parties, of York, Adams, Franklin, Cumberland, Fulton and Bedford; and they are not seeking charity from the State, nor are they desiring that the highest just standard of loyalty shall be lowered. They have given their fathers, sons and brothers to preserve our Nationality; they have promptly borne their full share of the burdens of the government, and they feel that they can justly demand that the great Commonwealth of Pennsylvania shall not be unmindful of her highest duty to her citizens, and forgetful of her first prerogative as a sovereign State.

"But it will cost a million dollars or more!" exclaim those who ever hesitate between expediency and right. True, it may cost a million or a million and a quarter; but if it should cost five millions instead of one, the necessity for compensation would only be the more imperative; because the more grievous would be the burden upon individual citizens. Pennsylvania has five millions due her for years from persons who hold unpatented lands--three times the amount necessary to vindicate her fame as a protecting sovereignty in this instance; and will the legislature allow the just claims of the State upon her debtors, who have been forgiven interest for a time whereof the memory of man runneth not to the contrary, to remains undemanded, and at the same time withhold compensation to citizens who have suffered by invasion? Must one class of our people receive gifts from the State, and another be refused protection and many left to bankruptcy? If so, our boasted Commonwealth is a fiction and a fraud, and our pride in the genius of our government a delusion. Let the legislature be just--the people of the border want nothing more. Let the revenues of the State be gathered and husbanded--let just claims be collected and just debts be paid, and we are content; but it is not justice to practically give away five millions to owners of lands, and declare the State too poor and powerless to give security to the persons and property of her citizens.

The hand-writing on the wall relative to Slavery, has at last been read by the Democratic leaders, and they are about to declare that it has been "weighed in the balance and found wanting." For years they have been the main dependence of Slavery. It was by their aid it was emboldened to aggression upon the genius of our government, until it became imperial in its demands, and proclaimed itself master of the continent. It was by their aid that it reversed the doctrine of the fathers of the Republic, declaring the Territories free; by their aid that it was en[a]bled to defy the solemnly plighted faith of the Nation by the repeal of the Missouri restriction; by their aid that Kansas was over-run by brutal ruffians, usurping the power of government, and imperiling life and property unless devoted to the cause of bondage; by their aid that the highest judicial tribunal of the Nation was made to confront the common law of the civilized world, by declaring that Slavery could exist in Territories without municipal regulations giving it life; and it was by their aid that Treason was at last strengthened for its crowning crime in seeking to destroy the great Republic of the world by wanton war. But three years of appalling conflict have written in letters of flame upon the Nation's pathway, as did Jefferson in the earlier and better days of our fathers, that God is just; that His justice will not sleep forever: and He proclaims in His own good time "Venveance [sic] is Mine--I will repay!"

Slavery is doomed! The earnest and faithful have so declared it for years past; but the hesitating, the timid, the temporizing, the faithless struggled for its existence for months after it had become the giant suicide of the world's history. But slowly and surely they are awakened to the fact now patent as the sun at noon-day, that it has staked its existence in a war against Justice and Humanity--against Man and God, and it has lost in the struggle. Still the weak tremble lest its death throes shall be too violent; lest it shall rend a government from centre to circumference by its dying convulsions; but the overruling hand that "shapes our ends, rough-hew them as we will," is a stranger to the expedients which would stand between the triumph of Right when its day has come, and the morn of universal Freedom dawns brightly upon the Western World.

There are still thousands who are blind; who would follow Slavery upon the altar of suicide, and wreck political fortune with it, and share its dishonored grave. But the world moves; and Democracy moves with it. It is slow to surrender its early and constant love; it is sluggish in appreciating manifest truth, and reluctantly admits that there is a present whose new duties have been created by the chequered and crimsoned past; but it is coming; it is seeing; it is acting, and it will soon champion Emancipation with all the ardor of a modern convert. It loves Slavery none the less; but it loves Power more, and it will not war against destiny. It has tried it, and lost; it will now unfurl new banners with strange devices, and Slavery may die if thereby Democracy lives. So it faltered in 1849, when the Democracy of every Free State but Iowa declared for the Wilmot Proviso; but its master re-asserted its power, and with relentless vengeance Slavery bid Democracy atone for its perfidy by new evidences of affection. But now Slavery has passed the boundaries of hope--the decree is inexorable that it must die, and again Democracy, after fruitless efforts to preserve its life, pronounces it dead and entombs it under the epitaph of retributive justice!

He who supposes that the Democracy are going to venture upon a Presidential contest with banners streaming for the dead, reads the signs of the times to little purpose. The humble followers who but re-echo the dictates of leaders, may still be for Slavery; but they will be schooled in time, and will follow the new path with that confidence in masters that has ever made Democracy formidable. The World declares that Slavery's "downfall is the natural result of the war and the Democratic party cannot interpose to save it. Its destruction is a risk which the South voluntarily incurred when they resorted to arms, and it would be great inconsistency for us to intervene in favor of an institution which we disapprove." The New York Express says that "all feel that Slavery has gone by the board. Politically it was dead before the war began. Physically it is now dead, and ought not for one moment enter into any discussion relating to the war, any more than anything else that is dead beyond all hope of resurrection." The Chicago Post, the leading Democratic organ of the West, says it has from the first declared that "rebellion would be the natural destruction of Slavery." The Pittsburgh Post declares that "the future peace of this now distructed [sic] and bleeding country requires the total extinction of Slavery among us." The New York Herald daily declares Slavery dead beyond the hope of future life, and the Catholic organs of Cincinnati and Philadelphia have both pronounced the doom of human bondage as inevitable. Hon. James Brooks, Democratic M.C. from New York, said in Congress a few days ago that "as a Roman in the days of Caesar, or a Frenchman in the days of Napoleon, I must cease protesting and resisting. Hence I recognize the abolition of Slavery; hence I intend to act hereafter upon that recognition, because it is inevitable." Hon. Cyrus L. Pershing, leading Democrat in the Pennsylvania legislature, in a carefully prepared political speech in the House last week, declared that "Slavery had stabbed itself to death--it must die;" and a convention of the Democratic Editors of this State, in secret session in Harrisburg on the 24th ult., resolved informally that their cherished idol should be mourned as a thing of the past; that all their hopes of success demanded but few tears and moderate sorrow for their departed ally. True, one of the journals there represented declared but a week ago that "the enslavement of the black race is one of the Almighty's great purposes, whereby out of evil he educes good," but "the Almighty's great purposes" will be reversed in theory and day that the interests of Democracy intervene.

What means this revolution? It is not accident, or impulse, or any new born love for humanity, on the part of Democratic leaders. It means that the Democratic party regard the success of the war and the overthrow of the rebellion and Slavery as inevitable, and they seek to reap the fruits of this great victory over themselves by electing the next President of the United States. They are now silent as to M'Clellan, save in a few localities where they know no better. In the great centres of Democratic power, where the Seymours, the Woods, the Richmonds rule, no follies as to platforms or "Little Napoleons" are committed. The delegates chosen are silent as to their choice; the declaration of principles allows the widest latitude for the mutations of ninety days still in the womb of the future; and if the Union armies are crowned with fresh victories in the West this spring, they will accept their last lingering hope of success--take Gen. Grant for the Presidency if they can get him, and declare for the abolition of Slavery in all the States of the Union. Gen. M'Clellan will have served his purpose. His letter to the President pleading for the life of Slavery will be assigned with him among the relics of the past, and Democracy will champion War, Abolition, Confiscation, and summary executions if need be, to compass the next Chief Magistracy of the government. Such is the manifest drift of Democracy. In despair it turns from the Slavery it loved and cherished to the Freedom it has hated and maligned, and bringing gifts to the Republic and its noblest chieftains, it will seek to regain power over the Nation just rescued from the bloody fruits of its perfidy.

Free Schools and Democracy don't seem to work well together down in York county. The unterrified defenders of the constitution are earnestly opposed to negro troops until they are compelled to choose between going themselves and getting "Unbleached Americans" to go in their places, when they with wonderful unanimity, adopt the inspiring lines of Miles O'Riley--

"I'll let Sambo be murdered in place of myself,
On every day of the year."

One of these disciples of a constitutional war wrote the following letter to a citizen of Hagerstown, and it has been given to the public through the Hagerstown Herald

North Cators Township York County Pa
Jany the 18--64

Mr Anderson Deer Sur as a strange I Write To You To fint out whethr there are any Jams To get Collerds man in your Nabor Hood that could Bee Bought for Soldrs as we want to Know of any Boddy that Take Them up for Saile Pleese Let me Know at What Price we Could get them We want 27 man for our Township I have been Tolle that the Cold Bee Bought in your Nabour hood

Reman you ------
Derect you Letter
Seven Vally Post office York County Pa
Let me Know Amedley