Franklin Repository

In last week's REPOSITORY we gave Gen. Cameron's Philadelphia speech assailing the Union Congressmen of that city and it is but just that Judge Kelly should be heard in reply. It will be seen that he don't take to funeral ceremonies at all gracefully, especially when he is to play the part of the corpse. Judge Kelly's letter is addressed to the Union voters of the Congressional district he has so ably and acceptably represented since 1860, and is as follows:

A long and successful career in crime emboldens the guilty. A recent illustration of this law of human nature impels me to violate my life-long rule of conduct, and for once to notice a political slanderer. I do not, however, address you for the purpose of repelling his innuendoes or falsehoods. My life has been passed among you, and if its record, familiar to you all, does not repel them, I have lived in vain. My purpose is simply to pierce the mail of ill-gotten gold in which the slanderer has clothed himself, and give you a glimpse at the loathsome object it protects.

The papers of Friday announce that Simon Cameron, of Dauphin county, was serenaded by his friends on the preceding evening at the Girard House in this city, and availed himself of the occasion to villify my colleagues and myself "the Congressmen of Philadelphia," in a speech to the assemblage.

I was but a youth when I first heard the name of Simon Cameron, and it was as the perpetrator of a great crime. He had been made the agent of the Government to carry a large amount of money, due them, to the Winnebago Indians, and had taken advantage of their ignorance and helplessness to enrich himself. Those of you who had then attained to manhood, though you may not, after the lapse of so many years, revive the burning indignation with which you regarded the infamous swindler of the poor Indians, will doubtless remember that instead of paying them the specie which the Government confided to him for that purpose, he retained it, and gave them the notes of the Middletown Bank, of which he was an owner. At their encampment in the remote wilderness these notes were utterly worthless. The Indians could not use them for any purpose there, nor carry them to Middletown for redemption. But what was that to Simon Cameron! Was not their loss his gain, and was he not so much the richer by every note that failed to come home for redemption, though they did suffer and starve! And those of you who are not old enough to remember all this, now know why this bold, bad man is sometimes spoken of by your seniors as the "great Winnebago," and sometimes as "Old Kickapoo."

For more than thirty years I have watched the tortuous career of this man, and have never seen a reason to abandon my first impression of his character. Whether acting with the Democratic, the Know Nothing, or the Republican party--for he has in turn disgraced them all--he has never been false to his criminal instincts. He has endeavored to turn them all to profitable account. His ambition is sordid and panders to his avarice, and he measures honors by the perquisities they expose to his grasp. He has no confidence in the people, and is aware that they distrust him. His speech Thursday evening was not characteristic of him, for he is prone to the use of instruments. His habit is to point the stiletto, but to employ another hand to drive it home. Though an active participant in the politics of his country and the State for more than half a century, during which long period he has pursued the profits of office, of jobs, of contracts, with eager and ceaseless assiduity, he has never dared to permit his name to be presented to the people of his country or State as a candidate for an elective office. He crawls to the feet of the appointing power. He cares not who may be King, so that he may "still be Vicar of Bray," and to that end he chaffers with and corrupts weak and needy members of Conventions and the Legislature of both parties.

I need not recite the disgraceful facts attending his several canvasses for the United States Senate. Their nauseous odor lingers in your nostrils to this hour. In the first he bought the votes of three Democratic members, and in the last bid twenty thousand dollars for the one vote which would have elected him. Their last transaction was so flagrant that the Legislature was compelled to take cognizance of it, and, if justice be not lame as well as blind, the law and honor of our State will yet be vindicated.

The evil report of his deeds pervades the country as a reproach to our State. Yes, unhappily for Pennsylvania and her great interests, the buzzard-winged fame of Simon Cameron is national. By months of abject solicitation and corrupt bargaining he procured a mass of letters, certificates and recantations, that imposed upon President Lincoln as the representative man of the Keystone State. That was an evil hour for Pennsylvania. You all remember how he organized the Navy Agency in this city, and feel the ineffable reproach he thus brought on our Navy Yard and commercial and other business men. In the course of his imprudent and ill-judged harangue he said: "In the olden time a member of Congress from Philadelphia would have had sufficient influence to have carried his point (the establishment of a Naval Station at League Island) without a dissenting voice." Is that the assertion of a sober man? And did he who made it forget that our Congressmen in the olden time in proposing to locate a government workshop at Philadelphia, had not the terrible reputation of Simon Cameron, the Fagan of the Harrisburg lobby and ex-Secretary of War to contend with, and, therefore, had some change for success? My colleagues and I were less happy than they in this respect.

As I have said, he begged and bargained for the influence which induced Mr. Lincoln to invite him to a seat in his Cabinet. It was now fondly hoped, by those who had not sounded the depths of his depravity, that, being old and rich, he would take advantage of so distinguished an opportunity to prove that he could be honest, and could administer a trust without turning it to his own profit, or handing the fund over to his creatures, to be used on joint account. How sadly these hopes were disappointed is attested by the brevity of his term of office, and the circumstances under which it closed.

In less than one year from the day on which Simon Cameron was installed as Secretary of War, Congress--though at that early day it had before it but partial evidence of his crimes--indignantly drove him from that high office. Two-thirds of the members of the Lower House were friends of the Administration, and would gladly have sustained each member of it as they did its distinguished head.

You can imagine how painful it must have been to them to find themselves constrained by duty to proclaim the fact that the first man the head of their party had been induced to appointed as the successor of John B. Floyd had exhibited greater aptitude than he for his worst tricks. But it became inevitable, for this old man, notwithstanding his boasted and reputed millions, believes that one of his name is never rich enough until he has a little more, and to save their party and the country, the friends of the Administration in the House had to proclaim his infamy and denounce his crimes. Nor was the vote by which they did it a meagre one. His friends and those who would most gladly have averted this disgrace from our State, could rally but about one-third of the House against the resolution of condemnation. The vote was about two to one against him, though I, as a Pennsylvanian, not willing to bear witness against the representative of our State, but too well satisfied with his guilt to vote against the resolution, failed to record my vote.

In this fact, gentlemen, you have the secret of "this distinguished statesman's" hostility to me and my friends. Mr. Walborn, the Postmaster of Philadelphia, and other of his creatures, have offered me his friendship and support if I would endeavor to have that resolution expunged. My reply has invariably been that to stir foul matter would produce a stench. I have never in this or aught else endeavored to propitiate him or his creatures. No stone may mark the spot where my poor remains may finally rest, but I mean that my children shall be able to vindicate my name by pointing to the fact that Simon Cameron and his confidential friends were ever hostile to me.

With grateful regards, your, very truly.

Wm. D. Kelley.

Our "erring brethren" and "wayward sisters" of the rebel States seem to take to the work of reconstruction something after the manner that the spider takes to the fly. They are willing to take the oath of allegiance, to resume possession of their property forfeited by their treason, to vote at elections, and to be obedient to the constitution and the laws, as they understand them, or rather as they would make them if they had the power. Through the recent election in Norfolk thay rallied to the standard of one of Lee's officers, elected him chief magistrate of the city, and smashed in a few heads of those who happened to differ with them by way of showing their regard for the laws and their respect for such men as had been devoted to the Union from the beginning of the rebellion. The city of Norfolk was thus re-constructed after the most approved style, and may now be considered in the Union and a law-abiding establishment. True, any man who was not heartily in sympathy with the rebels during the war is safe there only when in close proximity to a few Union bayonets; but the "erring brethren" have that way with them and those who have not been so fortunate as to err, must accept the consequences.

Another effort at re-construction was had recently in Richmond, where a clean-limbed rebel ticket was chosen from Mayor down, and the re-constructed local government would have been promptly under way but for the arbitrary exercise of military power, which so disregarded the rights of unrepentant traitors as to squelch the whole election with its victorious champions. Although all voters had taken the oath of allegiance, solemly swearing to maintain the constitution and the laws of the United States, they openly, defiantly, advocated and elected men, solely because of their notorious hostility to the government and their presumed readiness to resist the national authority in every conceivable manner that does not lead straight-way to hemp and a trap-door. But the arbitrary military power of the government struck out with its despotic arm and suppressed the perspiring voters and their full-fledged traitors who had boasted of their restoration to civil power, whereupon the whole army of coppery sore-heads of the North mourn the cruel fate of their sympathizing brethren of Richmond, and vigorously denounce the Administration for not allowing blood-stained traitors to re-inaugurate lawlessness and chaos in the already desolated Old Dominion. It is sad, indeed, that the shadows of Libby with its chilly, dreary dungeons, and Belle Island, with its unnumbered graves of martyred Union prisoners, must pass from the authority of the traitors; but a loyal people have so decreed it, and such must be the record of history.

We know not where this system of reconstruction would end did not the administration demand some test of fidelity to the Union on the part of those who may be chosen to administer the laws in the subjugated States. In all probability, Hangman Wise or thieving Billy Smith would be recalled to the gubernatorial chair. Gen. Lee and Gen. Early, the hero who ordered the burning of Chambersburg, would doubtless be chosen United States Senators. The guerilla Mosby with Capt. Dick Turner, the famous keeper of Libby, and others of like heroism would be elected to the popular branch of Congress, and the lesser lights of treason could fill in as members of the Legislature, local Judges, Justices of the Peace, &c. Such a re-constructed government in the Old Dominion would have the merit of harmony in all its departments, and it would be uniform and consistent in its great aim to overthrow the Republic and make Virginia uninhabitable for Union men. This farce must stop sometime, and we think that the sooner the better. It is time that traitors should be made to understand that loyalty is one essential qualification for every State of the Union for any official trust, and if they will not learn it one way, they must learn it another. If they will elect only blood-stained, defiant rebels to important civil positions, they will hasten a solution of the great problem of reconstruction by subjecting the rebellious States to absolute military rule and the treatment of mere provinces of the United States.

RATHER ENCOURAGING.--Notwithstanding the merchants of Chambersburg, since the burning of the town, have been compelled to occupy small temporary shanties, with not sufficient room to keep large stocks or display goods, the returns made under oath to the Internal Revenue Assessor, of their annual sales, make a good show. They are as follows: