Franklin Repository

The Union ticket is now complete, and the issues involved in the election of our candidates are so clearly defined that none can err or be deceived as to their import and logical results. Of the men presented for the suffrages of the loyal people of this county and the districts with which it is connected, for most of the lucrative and important offices, the Union party have presented gallant and faithful soldiers, who have won distinction on our sanguinary fields and have the requisite fitness to fill the positions for which they are candidates with efficiency and credit. The noble soldier Maj. Gen. Geary heads the list for Governor. Col. F. S. Stumbaugh and Maj. Geo. A. Shuman, both soldiers from contested fields, are presented for the legislature, where they have already served with the hearty approbation of their constituents. Sergt. Harry Strickler and private T. M. Mahon, the candidates for two of the most lucrative offices in the county, have served in the army until disabled by wounds, and they are eminently fitted to make most acceptable officers. Mr. Strickler has been tried, and it is no injustice to any one to say that no county officer has served with more satisfaction to the public. Of Gen. Koontz we need not speak in detail. He is known to all our readers, who have watched with the liveliest interest the effort to defraud him out of the position to which the loyal people elected him, and he will be returned so triumphantly that fraud will be powerless to defeat the will of his district again. James Ferguson, the candidate for Associate Judge, is one of the most worthy men in the county; a man of unblemished integrity, intelligent, and in all respects fitted for the important office for which he is presented. Wm. H. M'Dowell is one of the oldest and truest supporters of the principles of the party; a man of most blameless character, and will make an obliging and efficient officer. Jonas C. Palmer, the candidate for Commissioner, Martin Heintzelman, the candidate for Director of the Poor, and Samuel Myers, the candidate for Auditor, are all of our mot substantial and deserving citizens. The offices for which they have been nominated are not important to them, but they are most important to the taxpayers of the county, and it is gratifying that men so eminently qualified for the trusts have been nominated.

The whole Union ticket can be elected from top to bottom by a decided majority, if the Union men of the county and districts do their whole duty. We must have organization--it must be immediate, systematic and thorough; and we must have hearty, cordial, earnest cooperation for the entire ticket. Franklin may decide both the Congressional and Legislative contests, and we must buckle on our armors and meet the foe with a zeal and determination worthy of our cause. We feel that we cannot too earnestly impress upon the Union men of Franklin county the necessity of immediate action. If we stand idly by while the opposition are working with tireless energy, we may sacrifice a portion of our ticket to our criminal supineness. We have the Union votes to make the victory complete, and it is worse than folly--it is a wrong to every loyal man and a wrong to the nation, for any Union man to sacrifice his cause to indifference.

The election is less than two months distant. The time is short, the labor to be performed is great, but it can be done, and well done, in time to leave no star on our flag blotted by defeat on the second Tuesday of October next. Union Men! organize for victory!

We condole with Mr. Sharpe. He unbosomed his grief to the Democracy on Tuesday evening last in the Court House, and the dark spectre of the African was omnipotent in his remarks. His whole frame vibrates and trembles at the apprehension of negro equality. He confesses himself so poorly endowed by his Creator that he fears some stalwart, long-heeled, wooly-headed and perfumed African may equal or surpass him in his profession, make his rhetoric pale on the stump, jostle him in his inordinate ambition for Congressional honors, and may even ride in the same car, bow down in the same church, worship the same God and finally turn up in the same locality where future rewards and punishments are dispensed by infinite justice--all because of the Freedmen's Bureau and Civil Rights bills.

We can render our stricken and sorrowing fellow-townsmen an indefinite amount of sympathy. Since it is his misfortune to be unable to cope with the downtrodden and oppressed African in the race for social, political and religious honors, he is surely entitled to protection. How it is to be given, we can't exactly divine, but it must be had. But for the fact that Mr. Sharpe peremptorily forbids any amendment of our constitution lest rebels should be somewhat inconvenienced for their murderous treason, we should join our afflicted fellow-citizen in demanding our organic law be so changed as to provide that no person of African or mixed blood shall ever learn more of law, politics, religion or social graces than said Sharpe; that no such person shall travel in the same vehicle or on the same road, or, if need be, in the same direction with Mr. Sharpe; that no such person, even to the fourth mingling of African and Southern Democratic blood, shall kneel in the same pew, supplicate the same throne, or go to the same heaven, with Mr. Sharpe; and that no such person shall intrude upon his social circle, bow to him on the street, or marry any of his relations.

It is a sad, sad story that Mr. Sharpe is helpless to protect himself against the aggressions of a degraded race, but sad as it is, he pronounces it no less true, and his infirmities appeal to the law-making power of the nation, in mute but most pathetic eloquence, for protection. Sleeping or waking, the African haunts him as a triple-headed giant with mountains of wool and most threatening ambition. Sharpe might point this hideous spectre to the bleaching bones of its fellows in Memphis, New Orleans and elsewhere, but the very dry bones seem to rattle new horrors in his ears, as he protests with heavy heart and tremulous tones against his unequal contest. Living or dead, the African is before him. His ghost will not down however bidden, and his dusky person and presence greet him on the street, in his office, in his study, in his social circle, in his praises and prayers, and even in his allotted tomb. In life the African is about him, in perpetual conflict for the mastery of learning, honor and fame, and even in the dark valley of the shadow of death, the negro will sleep with him, decay into inanimate earth so that the stain of caste will be obliterated, and when the last trump shall summon all the earth, behold there will be the African to cloud his spirit land, and what is sadder still, there will be no appeal to the high chancery of heaven against the harsh law of equality for all the people of the earth.

We do not produce this picture of consuming sorrow to Mr. Sharpe to inflict a needless wound where there are gaping wounds already; but we have drawn it to point the imperious necessity of some high decree, some reversal of the laws of a common Creator, to rescue Mr. Sharpe from this mountain of grief. He might take up the beneficent policy of his political friends of Memphis and New Orleans, and gather in the harvest of death while the African could be found in his path; but it would be as tedious as bloody, and even his ruffled ambition and wounded dependence might weary and sicken the gory carnival. There is therefore no relief but in an appeal to the law-making power both human and divine. They must be reversed. A new creation must be improvised for the purpose, and the line of distinction between the man and the brute must be marked up over the heads of the sable part of creation. True, there might still be fear and quaking, for unless the new order of brutes should be bereft of their reasoning faculties, the next shadow in Mr. Sharpe's pathway would be the rivalry of the animal kingdom for his honors. What then? We are lost in the bewildering mazes of this momentous question. Its misty labyrinths precede the cradle and reach far beyond the grave; and we can see no positive balm for his agonizing fears but by reversing the court above all created powers. This cannot be done by Democratic mass meetings or resolutions, nor by impassioned appeals to vulgar prejudices. Mr. Sharpe must, therefore, wade through the Congressional contest with the African confronting him at every step, in every condition, and in every shape that fancy can suggest, and when he is defeated, as he must be, there will be the dark spectre multiplied into an innumerable throng chanting, in ghostly, ghastly and horrible discord, the requiem over his political grave.

Courage, Mr. Sharpe! There is One whose attributes are measured by no human conception, who in life and in death will deal justly with all. In the fullness of time, prejudices of the ignorant and vulgar will fade away, and with them will perish the fears which seem to make life itself intolerable to ambitious Democratic politicians. The negro will fill his sphere--will cease to be hated by those who have only wronged him, and will be judged by his merits and usefulness as other men. He may not vote, or go to Congress, and physical laws as well as instinct forbid his mingling with his pale-faced oppressors, save as Slavery has brutalized the master and prostituted the slave; but the time is nigh at hand when to declaim against an ignorant, helpless, degraded race on the plea of possible equality, will, as it deserves, class the declaimer as beneath the level of those whose endowments and progress he effects to dread. Mr. Sharpe should appreciate the fact that the world moves; that some things are best to be forgotten, while some other things are best to be learned. He and his terrible African will both be wiser by and by, and the wiser they grow, the less they will fear each other!