Franklin Repository

We open the new year with this issue. We intend that it shall be, so far as we are able to compass the end, a year of struggling for the triumph of our principles, of contending, with greater zeal, for the establishing, finally and forever, of the fundamental truths which underlie the present, as we trust they ever will the future policy of our people. The beginning of a year, the opening of a campaign---still more their simultaneous occurrence---furnish, either of them, a fit opportunity for stating candidly to ourselves, and for our own profit, the precise posture of our affairs, and settling with minute determination the direction and extent of our proposed adventures. Our griefs, for such is human nature, are the themes of first and chief attention. Debt and sectional discontent disquiet us. The effort to subdue revolt entailed the former--our success in the attempt has caused the latter. It is true that we are burdened with taxes made necessary by our indebtedness, and that the burden, like the rain of Heaven, falls alike upon the just and unjust; and it is just as true that disaffection abounds among them, who, their injustice bringing the burden, find themselves enthralled by a force they cannot overcome. This debt, measurably, paralyzes our energies as it devours our resources, this discontent disturbs our peace insofar as it replaces coadjutors with drones of reactionaries or even sulky antagonists to our plans, who, by their inertia or their opposition, may endanger our security or imperil our prosperity. Both are in proportions too great to admit of consideration other than the most serious, both will eventually exact the wisest dealing. As the magnitude of the debt plants it firmly on our shoulders for years, the deep-seated causes of discontent among the Southerners will survive perhaps to their children. Evils, vast and enduring, demand statesmanship and it is fortunate that the elevation of thought which sacrifice coupled with labor induces, can be made to continue beyond the emergency which called it up. Our brief history as a nation, no more remarkable in its way, till 1860, than the rise of any of the republics which have flourished in their day and fallen, gained, by our entrance into a great war for the defence of human rights, the second point, at last, which determined the straight line of our national conduct. The statesmanship which determined this defence is comparable only with that which, fixing our initial point in the Declaration of Independence, indicated in its first legislation the bearings of the point which we have reached. There are those who deny our success in achieving it, who, unable to descry the starting place through the distance of years, or unable to discern the correspondence of our present place with the goal indicated on the chart our fathers gave us when we set sail, doubt the identity or allege mistake. Yet we think there is no doubt, that the stand-point of this people, when it assented to the proclamation of universal freedom on New Year's day of 1863, and the line of our advance from that date, are the goal and pathway which Jefferson, and Washington, and Adams, and Franklin strove to reach, but failing, consoled themselves in their future attainment and prosecution.

The fires of the war have died out--but their glowing heat is transferred to the bosoms of men. The statesmanship which was equal to the occasion and with rare discernment saw the true significance of events and was ready to grasp the long waited opportunity, will not desert us now. The dangers of imperiled credit and of seething discontent are not greater than those we missed in impending dissolution or the escaping of fortune's tide-brought wave unfreighted; and we are greatly mistaken if the implicit faith in Providence, which, born of trial and chastening, led us to defer, in action, to the commands of justice and made success possible hitherto, will not so shape our policy in the future as to achieve success and safety by warranting desert and favor. We conquered before by doing right, and we will maintain the mastery by continuing in well-doing. So doing, we may attack our evils hopefully. Luckily neither is an incurable evil. Huge as the debt is, it is simply an indebtedness, nothing more. A deficiency is to be replaced by assets--a vacuum to be filled in our coffers. Labor, the sole source of wealth, must be fostered, increased, made more powerful. The justice of emancipation reaps here its own reward, in that it substitutes four millions of willing, ambitious, laborers for the same number of indolent, lash-impelled, slaves. The evolving of untrammeled Northern energy, giving a place to the Pacific RailRoad among its effective machines and drawing the commerce of the world to our shores, is increasing our labor in untold quantity and productiveness. Abolition and internal improvement--twin Republican measures in the truest sense--are acts of the statesmanship which, taught by the sternest master, necessity, will yet lead us to stability and independence because first to freedom and homogeneity. The cancellation of a debt for a free nation is the simple problem of a long division, wherein the original dividend is to be set beside an ever augmenting divisor. The day of our relief from taxation hastens even whilst the calculation progresses, and, if we are true to ourselves, will arrest by its coming the hand of the computer. For, we have no notion that the burden, which over solicitous orators, who rush themselves into a fever when contemplating it, desire to lessen by means as questionable in their morality as injudicious in their expediency, will descend as an incumbrance to our children. We have measured its bulk and our strength and have reckoned on our increasing power to bear it and are satisfied with the observation. The nation contracted the debt; the nation has wisely set in motion the forces of the nation, by enfranchising its labor and equipping it, and to it may safely look to pay its debt.

Will the same prudent statesmanship deal as successfully with our other difficulty? It has sought to but has been grievously thwarted in the effort. The congregations of whites who largely compose the communities in ten of the areas we term States, are, by their majorities, restless and distracted. They have, hitherto, successfully resisted every effort made for a reconstruction of their governments in harmony alike with the national and State constitutions--their reason being bewildered by prejudice and their hopes inflamed by passion. Can the balance of their minds be restored--their defective vision made clear and the glow of feeling lessened? We see nothing hopeless in the work, if the pacificators be sagacious enough to remember that, however half-taught ranters may deny it, nothing wins as nothing lasts but truth and justice, and they firmly, fearlessly, follow their reforms to their legitimate, logical, results. Freemen we proclaimed ourselves to be, when we put our all at stake, and, appealing to the world for the rectitude of our intentions, fought for and gained the independence which secured our rights--freemen we were not, but liars to ourselves and to God, when we bound helpless millions in chains and falsified our lives as we had damned theirs--freemen we are at last, in name and in deed, when, having reft the shackles from our limbs, we, with tardy justice, declare and enact that liberty is an attribute of manhood as truly as life is the fight of Heaven. To this we hold, and holding this, we need not despair. A policy based on the truth of the equality of man must triumph; if discontent be present, must pacificate; if perversion obstruct, must correct and enlighten. Such is our human constitution that the right, the just, must prevail. The measures which are consistent with it will recommend themselves, for they are supported by that Power which gives success to the apostles who combat darkness and idolatry in heathen lands and leads the theology of our era to domination over all people. As a portion of His work, they will not fail, but apace with Christianity, progressively approach the grand consummation when as all men will be virtuous so will all men be entirely free. We do not postpone however, the allaying of our sectional discord to a period so remote as that at which the politician may sneeringly predict a general evangelizing will occur. It is as certain, but the anticipation is a nearer one. Assimilation will overcome the evil, if only the channels of absorbtion and deposition be left open. The pure, fresh blood of national life will soon course throughout all the veins of the body politic, and, being welcomed to the diseased tissues, will renovate and restore to healthy accord every morbid organ. We hope only that the wisdom which directed us during the war may prove steadfast and unchanging in dealing with this problem which so consequentially arises at its close.

We derive from our taking counsel with ourselves, then, these two conclusions, that we have done right and been prospered by the Providence which watched and sustained us, and, that if we abide in our convictions and press them to their results, the issue will be our deliverance from the perils which endanger our safety, and disturb our peace. In the enforcing of these convictions we will be found, during the coming year, seeking to play a manly part and we will confidently expect to behold as the fruits of our labors, the spectacle of a unified a prosperous and a happy land.

In accordance with the notice published in a previous issue, a meeting of the citizens of town and country was held in the Court House, on the evening of Wednesday, December 18th, of which the Rev. Dr. Schneck was elected Chairman, Col. Theodore M'Gowan Secretary. The objects of the meeting having been briefly stated by the Chairman, the Rev. F.P. Stevenson, of Philadelphia, was introduced to the assemblage as the orator of the evening. Mr. Stevenson, in a masterly address of an hour's length, unfolded the views and wishes of the organization which he represents, and of which he is an officer, placing the question which he deems the vital one of the age clearly before his hearers, and recommending the action, which he and they desire, by a train of the most cogent argumentation. A series of resolutions which have been, elsewhere, extensively adopted by similar meetings, were submitted by the speaker at the close of his address as a fair and full embodiment of the ideas of the agitators. Having been separately read by the Secretary, the resolutions were considered by the meeting and successively adopted. It was our intention to print them in this report, but they have been mislaid. They were four in number: the first reciting the duty of nations, as such, to formally recognize, in their charters, All mighty God as the source of all authority and power in civil government. Jesus Christ as the Ruler among the nations and his revealed will as of supreme authority: the second enumerating the evidences afforded by our past history and present position, of our failure to comply with this duty; the third declaratory of an utter want of desire upon the part of the agitators to prosecute this reform in a sectarian or intolerant spirit, and the last affirmative of the necessity incumbent on us to remedy our neglect as soon as practicable.

Upon motion it was resolved that another meeting, in continued advocacy of the matter, should be called at some convenient time hereafter.