Staunton Vindicator

The present political campaign presents the most remarkable phenomena ever displayed in a civilized country. The Federal Government of this Union, established by free, sovereign and independent States, for the purpose of insuring domestic tranquility, providing for the common defense, promoting the general welfare, and securing the blessings of liberty to the Citizens of these States and their posterity, is jeopardised and staked upon an aerial, mythical abstraction, originated amidst the fogs and mists of blind and unhealthy prejudice, and nursed by the agitation of sectional excitement and jealousy.

The Federal Government of the United States is acknowledged by all the world as the most perfect of the kind ever devised, and the destinies of a people--the happiest, the purest, and the best of all the nations of the earth--are all put at fearful risk and imminent peril, for the purpose of agitating a theory of political belief utterly inexpedient to be applied to any political fact now existing, or which will probably exist in the future.

We propose to demonstrate fully, fairly and satisfactorily to any unprejudiced mind, that the act of the secessionists is suicidal to the best interests of the South, incompatible with the existence of a national Democratic party, and tending to the disruption of the Union itself. And 1st. THE ACT OF THE SECESSIONISTS WAS ACTUALLY SUICIDAL TO THE BEST INTERESTS OF THE SOUTH, if endeavored to be carried into operation. Every one knows that the Congress of the United States consists largely of Black Republican representatives; that the predominant influence which they possess interposes an insuperable barrier to the passage of any law on the subject of slavery in the current domain of the country, at all recognizing that institution as entitled to existence therein. The history of that party from 1820 down to the present time, affords the most abundant testimony to the fact, that they are incapable of performing any deed, or of casting any vote, calculated in the slightest degree to benefit the slaveholder, where "slavery" itself is the subject matter of consideration. Their claim over has been, and now is, that there shall be "no more slave territory and no more slave States"--their mission is asserted to be the extinction of slavery.

The Kansas-Nebraska bill and the Cincinnati platform vest in the judicial tribunal of the United States alone the power of disposing of and determining any vexed question in a territory, wherein is involved the right of property in a negro, or the constitutionality of the local law of a legislature of such territory. The absolute withdrawal of the subject of slavery from the Congressional arena had long been an object of the keenest desire on the part of the South. More than once had the agitation of the question, arising out of the smallest circumstance, imperilled the safety of the Union, and cost the nation an amount of treasure sufficient to purchase a colony of negroes. It was a lever in the hand of Congressional fanatics which, applied at the pillars of the Constitution, and resolve the different members of the Confederacy into their original position of separate and independent sovereignties.

The Kansas-Nebraska bill, then, was hailed by almost the entire South as the harbinger of a brighter day, when the operation of Congress would be directed and applied to purposes and schemes for the general welfare of the States and the people, and not to inflammatory harangues upon the theme of negro slavery, the right or wrong, advantage or disadvantage of which is a matter solely for the consideration of the States which adopt or repudiate it.

"Congressional intervention for protection" of slavery in the territories re- transfers this question of negro slavery back to the halls of Congress; congressional intervention takes the interests of the slaveholder from under the protecting wing of judicial power, with all the appliances necessary to effect its decrees, and places them at the mercy of a merciless abolition Congress, which not only wwill not act for the protection of slavery, but the ultimate aim of whose political career is to deprive Southern citizens of their rights and their property.--To remove the flock from the watchful guardianship of the shepherd's dog and crook, and place it at the mercy of a pack of ravenous wolves, in expectancy of more effectual safety, would be looked upon as an act of downright madness; yet this removal of the interests of the slaveholder from under the jealous eyes and defense of judicial surveillance, when such men as Judge Tanney and Nelson are the sentinels on the outposts--to an arena where the assassin's dagger of a Kellog is backed by more numeric force than the Damascan blade of Southern honor, is not less insane. Congressional intervention, whilst it may, as an original question for the protection of slavery in the territories, be constitutional as an act of expediency or necessity, is impolitic to a degree which, when we reflect upon the manner of Black Republican intervention, must be characterized as suicidal to the South.

It affords abolitionism not only the means of perpetrating a direct wrong upon our citizens, but an opportunity for a continuation of these discussions in Congress, so pernicious to the welfare of the country. It furnishes fanaticism the ailment of which is the sine qua non of its existence.

It is a favorite idea, and one which we, with our understanding of the philosophy of the federal government, would be the last to dispute and the first to assert, that Congress is but an agent for the various States of the Union, with the extent of its powers distinctly defined and chalked out by the framers of the Constitution in that celebrated instrument; that the eminent domain of the federal government is held in trust for the States, and that being common property, acquired by common blood, risk and treasure, should be free alike to the citizens of the North and South with their property. This being the case, we put the question, whether, if the Southern delegates believed that not only the general good of the whole country, but the special advantage of their immediate constituents, would be subserved by investing the people of a territory with the power to pass their own local laws on all subjects, when they had formed their Legislature--laws themselves amenable to the criticism of judicial sagacity and change or abrogation of the edicts of the Supreme Courts--it would not be their duty, as honest representatives of the people's interests, to stand by such a law as the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, which drives from a national assemblage the discussion of a question that will agitate the whole country, to that field where the people are immediately interested in the discussion thereof? Let not the people of the South and North forever be agitated on these questions, which can be better and more advantageously and more justly considered and determined by those alone interested, subject to the supervision of the federal judiciary.

We think we have proved the first proposition, and pass on to the consideration of the second--That Congressional Intervention is incompatible with the existence of the National Democratic party.

Opposition to Wilmot Provisoism, and a desire to do justice to the citizens of every portion of the Union, rallied the conservative men of every party and every section, upon the floor of the U. S. Congress, into one close, fearless, compact phalanx. These men, consisting chiefly of Southern Democrats, and North-western Democrats, the latter led on by Stephen A. Douglas, of Illinois, whilst they in common were inspired with hatred to abolition usurpation, and a fervid love of country, disagreed upon one question in connection with slavery in the territories. They all admitted and agreed alike that the territories of the United States were the common property of the people of the several States of the Union--that this territory was subject to settlement by the North and South with every species of property recognized and established in these different sections--and that a territory, when it petitioned to be admitted as a State into the Union, should not be rejected because the institution of negro slavery had been adopted in the Constitution of such territory asking admission as a State. In all this they stood directly at defiance with Black Republicanism. Agreeing upon all these positions, they differed alone as to the time when the people of a Territory had the constitutional power to abolish slavery, or to institute it--one portion of the Democracy asserting that when a territory had a legislature capable of enacting laws, that then a majority of the people could determine the question for themselves, to suit themselves; and another portion of the Democracy contending that the people of a territory could alone pass upon this question as to the non-existence of slavery when they came with the Constitution of a State in their hand, claiming admission as a State into the Confederacy. There was a point of diversity then as to the time when, constitutionally, the people of a territory could fully manage their own affairs, especially on the subject of slavery. But this diversity existing as to constitutionality, there was no difference among the chief men of the North and South as to the ultimate conclusion of the whole matter. Whilst said Messrs. Davis and Cobb and Orr, (substantially, not literally,) "we believe the legislature of a territory cannot, constitutionally, enact laws adverse to slavery, yet it has the power, by non- legislation for its protection, to operate as prejudicially upon its interests as if it had the power in reality to abolish it. It has no positive power to prohibit, yet it is capable of a negative position, which will result in the same thing." Under this view of the case, (see Hunter and Mason's speech on the Kansas-Nebraska bill,) the whole Democracy, feeling a common sympathy upon all cardinal points of faith, agreed to people of the territory, subject to the supervision of the Supreme Court of the U. S.--a supervision permanent, perpetual in its power to modify or nullify, and capable, in its right to demand the assistance of every branch of government to aid in carrying into operation its edicts, of correcting any wrong within the reach of the strong arm of the law. If one portion of the Democracy is right in its constitutional construction, the Supreme Court stands by it; if the other is right, the Supreme Court stands by it. The spirit of this agreement was incorporated into the Kansas- Nebraska bill of 1854, the most universally popular act in the South ever considered by Congress on the subject of slavery. The Kansas-Nebraska bill was adopted and incorporated as a plank in the Cincinnati platform, and upon it all the Northern Democracy and Southern Democracy stood firmly and boldly amidst the political tempests which raged around it in 1856. This national Democratic idea and agreement comprehended in the Kansas-Nebraska act, Congressional intervention proposes to overthrow, to nullify--this National Democratic platform to abandon for one upon which not only the North-western Democracy cannot, in consistency with their honest opinions, stand, and which, by direct agreement, it was determined they should not be required to stand, but which a large portion of the Southern Democracy repudiate as unwieldy and misshapen in its proportions, and inexpedient and unwise in its assumptions and demands.

An abandonment of national ideas must break up the National Democratic party--a breach of an honest agreement, a Congressional compact, must break up the Democratic party--denunciation and abuse of the ideas of the North-western Democrats, must drive them from relations of amity and brotherhood with those who indulge in denunciation and abuse. And thus, eventually that great Democratic party, which has been the avaunt-courrier of the mighty army of human progress, tolling up the rugged ascents of civilization in this nineteenth century of time; that great Democratic party which has protected, vindicated and preserved the rights of the States, and the privileges of individuals, from the centralizing power of federal absorption; which has given glory and power and importance to the national relations of the United States, and diffused the blessings of civil, religious and political liberty into the meanest hovel of the land--will be broken up by the wild passions of sectional jealousy, to occupy hereafter a position almost as powerless for harm or good as the party of the Opposition, now clamoring for the election of Bell.

If we have not proven the second proposition sufficiently to the satisfaction of our readers, we can furnish on demand, the evidence of those now fighting on the intervention plank, fully establishing our assertions.

That the secession at Charleston and Baltimore from the Democratic party tends to the disruption of the Union itself, will require but little effort on our part to show--all the signs of the times, all the movements of extreme Southern politicians and States; all the pronouncements and denunciamentos of Cotton State organs, affords evidence startling to every lover of the Union, its permanence and perpetuity. We do not propose to discuss the question of dissolution in the event of Lincoln's election. We are satisfied that pure and philanthropic men believe the act of electing Lincoln on the part of the Northern people, justification in itself of dissolution. We discuss not this question at present. We do assert, however, that the Democracy united, standing shoulder to shoulder on the Cincinnati platform, with their banner borne by a bold, stout champion of the faith, would, without any doubt, have achieved a triumphant victory over the Black Republican and Opposition parties--that the Congressional interventionists destroyed, by their persistent effort to interpolate, and their withdrawal on the failure to obtain interpolation, the power, the unity and the prestige of the only party capable to achieve a triumph over Lincoln; and that Lincoln's election, which may be secured by the secession, is considered a just cause for dissolution by some of the most prominent statesmen of the South.

We are not attacking seceders for advocating dissolution if Lincoln is elected--of this we shall have a chapter hereafter. We are holding them up to the public observation as the authors of the disintegration of a party unity, the consequences resulting from which may be the election of the traitor Lincoln, cause sufficient, as contended by some, for a dissolution of this Confederacy.

There is more than the affirmative of these propositions concluded in this wild and reckless act of secession--there is a latent--no, not latent--a potent insult offered to these brave and chivalrous Democrats of the north-west, who, in every hour of political trial, stood as a wall of fire between the assaults of fiendish abolition miscreants, and the rights and interests of the South. Who advocated the annexation of Texas, itself a Southern measure? The North-western Democracy, represented by S. A. Douglas. Who in the North advocated the beneficent tariff of 1846? The national Democracy, as represented by Douglas. Who of the Northwest vindicated and defended the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850? Stephen A. Douglas, at the risk of fortune and life, in the front of infuriated mobs, with hideous visages lighted into fearful contortions by the burning fires of his own effigies? Who run the gauntlet of Northern indignation on the abrogation of the Missouri line, and the restoration of equal rights, in common territory , to the Southern citizen, as effected in the Kansas Bill? Stephen A. Douglas.--Such are the Democrats, and such the representative men of these Democrats, whose services and patriotism are repudiated and denounced by the slobbering lips of a tyrannical despot, as impersonated by James Buchanan, and in the honied sentences of a revolutionary precipitator, as represented by a Yancey. Damn them!

Fate of the Seceders.

Now when the practical effects of that insane and criminal proceeding--the secession at Charleston and Baltimore--are being realized in the defeat and overthrow of the National Democracy at the North, the public mind will be brought fully to understand the issue before the country, and the masses of the people will bring home to themselves the dreadful consequences which are likely to result from the disruption of the Democratic party. The question has always been one of Union or Disunion, and all the sophistry of the secession organs and speakers cannot now conceal the truth from the public understanding. The shameless inconsistency of those who have precipitated this ruin upon the country, and their barefaced effrontery, will now be fully exposed . . . [text missing] . . . Douglas have labored hard to convince the people of the danger in which they were placed, and have sought by every means in their power to bring the true issue involved in the contest fairly before the people. Much has been done towards dispelling the illusion into which many of the honest masses were precipitated by the leaders of the secession party. But argument and appeal are no longer necessary. Facts--stubborn and undeniable facts--now present themselves, which must convince the masses that all we have told them in regard to the danger which is to be apprehended from this secession movement, will be in all probability fully realized. The President of the United States and the disunionists of the Cotton States, united in endeavoring to defeat the nomination of a candidate upon the old platform of the party, and succeeded in demoralizing and destroying the Democratic organization; and now, after their work is complete, after they have succeeded in securing a breach in our ranks, which is growing wider and wider, the people have the practical results before them. The returns of the elections in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Indiana, show in a manner which cannot admit of doubt, that our division has given the Black Republican party an immense advantage in the Presidential contest. The President, with increasing malignity, continues his war upon the Democratic party, both North and South, and is doing all in his power to secure its defeat. Look at the returns from the North. The gallant Democracy have just passed through a contest precisely similar to the Illinois contest in 1858. They have in many districts nobly sustained themselves against the Republican and Administration coalition, and have gained six or seven members of Congress. But in many districts, the aid which the Republicans have received from the Breckinridge and Buchanan party, has enabled them to increase their majorities, and the State tickets have consequently been defeated. In almost every Northern State the Democracy are fighting a double foe.-- The Republicans, bold, defiant and united as one man, at all times a most formidable enemy--aided by the desertion of a fragment of the Democratic party, under the control of Buchanan and Breckinridge, through their army of office- holders and dependents--have everything to beck them on to triumphant result. This is precisely a repetition of the Illinois contest of '58--the Democracy against the Republicans, the latter aided by the whole power of the Administration. Will the people of the South countenance and justify such infamous conduct? Douglas and the main army of Northern Democrats straining every nerve in a death struggle to defeat Lincoln, and the Breckinridge party standing out in determined resistance to Douglas and the Democracy, and using every effort to secure his defeat. It is time the people understood these matters. The truth must be proclaimed, and as a public journalist, it is our imperative duty to apprise them of the facts and warn them of the danger. Democrats of Virginia, we call upon you who have agreed to support this "bolters" ticket, to pause and reflect ere it is too late.--Let no man, as he values the Union, and the peace and continued prosperity of the country, unite himself with the Secession party. Look at the conduct of the "bolters" themselves. They are now becoming frightened at the results of their own action. They have sown to the wind, and they are now about to reap the whirlwind. The people are becoming fully aroused to a sense of the danger which threatens the country, and woe betide the authors of the ruin, if it be not averted. The great "Bolter" from Alabama has become frightened, and has gone to New York to speak to the people there. For whom, Democrats of Virginia, do you suppose this leader of secession is haranguing the people of New York? Is it for Breckinridge and Lane? Is it for Congressional Intervention Mr. Yancey is pleading? Does he proclaim that Mr. Douglas and his friends are no better than Lincoln? None of these things has Mr. Yancey done in New York. But he implored the people to vote the fusion ticket--19 of the electors being for Douglas, 10 for Bell, and 6 for Breckinridge. Has it come to this? Are the Breckites so hard run as to back down from their pretended ground of principle, and go for Douglas the traitor, and Bell the abolitionist? Such is the fact so far as Mr. Yancey is concerned. Wm. L. Yancey, who denounced Douglas as a traitor in Virginia, and proclaimed Bell to be an abolitionist, is urging and imploring the people to vote for Douglas and Bell to save the country and the Constitution!--Does Mr. Yancey see the handwriting on the wall, or has he become convinced that we, the National Democracy, have been right from the first, in calling upon the people to sustain Stephen A. Douglas, as the only man who can defeat Lincoln? Yancey is frightened--he is afraid of the wrath of the people. The secession movement must go down in the South, and every man who has led it must go down with it. How utterly idle and ridiculous the boast of these men, that they are contending for principle! In Virginia Mr. Yancey proclaimed that in order to sustain the Constitution, Douglas must be voted down as a traitor and free-soiler in disguise. In New York he tells them that in order to sustain the Constitution, you must vote for Douglas--Douglas the agitator and advocate of free-soilism, as he proclaims in the South. Can this man face an honest and intelligent people after such miserable inconsistency?

Mr. Yancey is, we repeat it, alarmed.--His darling scheme cannot succeed. The people of the South will repudiate him and his candidate, and with them his doctrine of Intervention. This is what Mr. Yancey fears? What else could induce him to go for the Douglas and Bell electors in New York? If he was honest here, how can he advise any man to vote for Douglas anywhere? But more than that--he tells them to go for Bell and Everett, with their 10 electoral votes. Bell, the abolitionist, supported by Wm. L. Yancey in New York! We tell these seceders what we told them from the first--their days are numbered.--The people are repudiating them all over the South. They have been beaten in Missouri, Georgia, Arkansas and Kentucky, and wherever an election has taken place. And now this great Mogul of the party goes to New York and cries aloud for the Douglas men to save the "Constitution, and the Union under the Constitution."

Mr. Yancey, like his candidate, won't answer as to what he will do if Lincoln is elected. He says he will do what Alabama [word missing]. Pray what will you tell Alabama to do, Mr. Yancey? Come out, gentlemen--don't dodge. You are down, and you know it. People of Virginia have nothing to do with the secession concern- -it is played out, and everybody knows it.