Valley Spirit

THE REPUBLICAN STATE CONVENTION.

The Republican State Convention which has just come to an end at Harrisburg, was composed of the odds and ends of all the political organizations that ever flourished in this Commonwealth. Radicals, Free Soilers, Humanitarians, Free Lovers, Know Nothings and renegade Democrats made up the body which selected the ticket, and announced the platform of the Republican party in Pennsylvania for the coming contest. Simon Cameron was there with Kelley's letter plastered on his back: Thaddeus Stevens with his life long hostility to the Union and the Constitution occupied a prominent position; John W. Forney, who one day supports the reorganizing policy of the President, and the next is with the radicals, had a hand in the proceeedings; Gov. Curtin, who is scheming and toiling for a seat in the Senate of the United States, put in his oar and helped to speed the boat; John Cessna crawled in and out and left his slimy track on everything, while minor politicians emitted their rush light radiance and then sank into their original obscurity. In all that convention there was not a single representative Pennsylvania man, no one whom even the Republican party would be willing to endorse save for mere partisan tricks and scheming--not one of the leaders of the convention has ever done honor to the Keystone State by his public virtue or left the impress of his talents upon her history or legislation in such a way as to command the admiration and esteem of the intelligent and the good. Not one of these men who have presumed to express the sentiments of even the Republicans of this State, is competent by the elevation of his moral nature to understand the duties of the present hour in relation to the restoration of the civil relations between the States of the Union. They are but partisan sharpers, who cheat and juggle, and throw with loaded dice, while the country is suffering, and the people are calling for honest, open action in favor of conciliation and reorganization.

As for the resolutions of this convention they, like the pantaloons of the clown in the circus, have a different color for front and rear. One side is for Radical, the other for conservative admiration. Thus, for instance, the third resolution is said to endorse the restoration policy of the President. But does it do this? Look at the resolution:

3d. Resolved. That the mild and generous method of reconstruction offered by the President to the people lately in rebellion, in the judgment of this convention, has not been accepted ina spirit of honest loyalty and gratitude, but with such evidences of defiance and hostility as to impel us to the conviction that they cannot be safely entrusted with the political rights which they rejected by their treason, until they have proven their acceptance of the results of the war, and incorporated them in constitutional provisions, securing to all men within their borders their inalienable rights to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.

This resolution, while declaring that the policy of reorganization suggested by the President is "mild and generous," does not approve of it, or of the method by which reconstruction is sought to be effected in the late revolted States. That is not endorsing the plan of the President any more than saying that a note is properly drawn up would be endorsing the note. The Republican party of Pennsylvania has refused to put its name upon the back of the North Carolina proclamation of Andrew Johnson, and that is repudiating his policy and accepting that of the Chase radicals, who declare for negro suffrage in all the Southern States, or no restoration of the Union. Such is the real position of the Republican party in Pennsylbania as officially declared by their State Convention, and the people must be prepared to pass judgment upon it at the polls.

The fourth resolution proves that the Republican organization in this State is entirely in the hands of the radicals. It is as follows:

4th. Resolved. That, having conquered the rebellious States, they should be held in subjugation, and the treatment they are to receive, and the laws which are to govern them, should be referred to the law-making power of the nation, to which they legitimately belong.

How can this resolution be squared with the reorganization policy of the President? The North Carolina proclamation speaks of the States as States under the Consitution. This resolution declares them "subjected" States. The North Carolina proclamation declares that the "laws in force previous to the passage of the so-called ordinance, of "secession" shall continue in force until others are enacted by the elected Representatives of the people. This resolution announces the despotic dogma that the law-making power of the nation" should invade the States and enact all the local laws by which they are to be governed. The carrying out of this doctrine would subordinate every State in the Union to the will of the partisan majority in Congress, and put our government on a level with those of the most despotic kingdoms of the old world. yet such the Republican State Convention of Pennsylvania has pledged the party to support. How can this be called an endorsement of the reorganization policy of the President?

We need go no farther into the recorded acts and expressions of the Republican Convention to prove that the party is placed by its representatives upon the most radical platform. To be sure they did not openly endorse negro equality, but the concluding clause of the third resolution is radical enough in its suggestions to cover the whole ground. They will lose no radical votes on that issue. The only question is, will the people of the old Keystone State approve by their votes this attack upon the only policy by which the States can be reorganized in accordance with the principles of our government, and peace and prosperity be speedily returned to the nation. The Republican party have put partisan success, the retention of political power, above patriotism, above the perpetuity of a free form of government, and upon this issue the people of Pennsylvania are called to decide at the coming State election. --Age

Col. H.S. Olcott, who writes us a letter eleswhere published, is one of the "nine officers, twenty servants, one phonographer and thrity-four horses," who compose the Doubleday court martial--he being a colonel on detective business of the War Department. We shall briefly answer his points.

I. If the expenses of the Doubleday court martial are paid out of the amount reserved from Cozzens contract, who pays the expenses of the United States Circuit and District Courts, in Philadelphia, and the further expenses of officers in the army, who are doing work which these "nine officers, twenty servants, one phonographer and thirty-four horses," should be doing?

II. According to Col. Olcott, the govenrment makes enough out of Cozzens to pay the court. If there were no court would not all this be clear gain? The money goes and no adequate return comes from it; and so far as debt and unnecessary expense are concerned, it might as well be in Cozzens pocket as in that of the court. The money most certainly does not go to the Treasury, where it belongs.

III. Col. Olcott explains Judge Thompson's decision. That decision was plain. Cozzens was arrested "by order of the Secretary of War," and discharged by the Secretary in deference to the gathering wrath of Pennsylvania. There was no appeal to arms, for the War Secretary showed great discretion. Col. Olcott intimates that any future habeas corpus will be "resisted with arms." Colonel, you are mistaken as well as injudicious in such an intimation. Not a musket will be raised against the writ. The pepole have had enough of musketry.

IV. As to the item of forage, to which Col. Olcott objects, we cannot amend it. --We have better evidence than that of a correspondent. This forage is allowed; and when a government allowance is made, the officers always find some way of drawing it. The only way to controvert our bill is to send us the court pay-roll.

We have now answered Col. Olcott's statements, and in doing so, the labored defense of the Press in reply to the Tribune. But Col. Olcott and the Press make this mistake: We do not attack the Doubleday court martial, but the whole system of military courts assembling in peaceful States and presuming to administer justice. We take that court as an example to show the people the folly of the practice. The anxiety of the members of this court--their extreme sensitiveness about the just and dispassionat comments of the Tribune--can only be accounted for on the law of nature, which makes the barnacle cling to the ship, or the reptile to the blood yielding body. We do not assail them, but the system, of which they are, we had always hoped, obedient but unwilling members. Court martial pay is good, and the work easy, and (particularly in Thompson's baiiiwick) there is no harm to be dreaded. But it is expensive and absurd. Let the War Department put its "nine officers, twenty servants, one phonographer and thirty-four horses," at soma war duty, or muster them out of the service. The Press reminds us that these officers are gallant, and some of them have been wounded. Granted. But there are ten thousand other soldiers quite as gallant and as severely wounded. Must they be made into court martials? If these courts are to be made into military hospitals or "Homes," let it be announced, and we shall not say nay. As the whole business stands now, it is a scandal--an extravagance and an absurdity. Try a man 140 days; spend $20,675.83 in the work, and have him released in spite of your power-- and then go on and try another man, who will probably cost another $20,000 and be released. If Col. Olcott or the Press can match this in rare humor, we should like to see it. It certainly is very funny, and we would be glad to enjoy it; but unfortunately, it cost so much, and looks absurd, even if it were not mischievous.

For the past two days there has been considerable excitement in Clark county, Indiana, caused by the attempt on the part of negroes to commit a most damnable outrage upon the person of an old and respected lady of the county. Within the past two months the recurrences of outrages of this kind in the border counties of Kentucky and Indiana have been of frequent occurrence, and so intense has been the feelings of the citizens against this class of persons, that many of them have been compelled to leave their houses to escape summary punishment, for if they had been captured they would no doubt have been hung on the first tree.

Yesterday morning the body of a negro was found on the Charlestwon road, about 400 yards from where the outrage was committed. At the time our informant left the excitement was intense, and there was no telling what might be the result--a mob against the negroes being anticipated.

At latest accounts the negroes were fleeing from Evansville in all directions, being fearful of being killed by the citizens. --The citizens beat them wherever they can reach them, and they seem determined, since the brutal outrage of two negroes upon the person of a white lady on Sunday, to rid the city entirely of them. On Monday night a crowd made a rush for the steamer Carrie to clean out the negroes, but fortunately they were non est. The wildest excitement prevailed when the Lady Grace left there. She arrived here yesterday, and reports that the negroes are scared almost out of their wits. They are coming away in boats and taking to the woods. We hope nothing serious will occur.

LATER

We learn that the military authorities were attempting to put a stop to the proceedings of the mob. Several negroes have been killed or hung, and an order has been issued compelling all the negroes to leave the town, and all persons who have them in their employ are ordered to discharge and drive them from their premises.

"This body adjourned last evening, and most of the delegates have left the city. --The principal portion of the afternoon session was devoted to the delivery of addresesin favor of educating the negroes of the South--"the new--born children of the nation" as one of the speakers styled them--and preparing them for good citizenship and for the exercise of the social and polit-rights which they are destined to enjoy in the future, in common with all other citizens. One speaker asserted that there could be no successful or permanent reconstruction of the Union that did not include the extension of a system of popular education throughout the Southern States, and a thorough education of the negro masses, as well as a recognition of their claims to citizenship and the full exercise of the rights and priveileges to which they were justly entitled. Both speakers indulged in severe denunciations of the slaveholding aristocrats and the poor "white trash" of the South, recognized the negro as their superior, and glorified him as worthy of being elevated to a social equality with white men and capable of being educated to an intelligent exercise of the right of suffrage. Two "American citizens of African descent," who occupied seats among the spectators were solicited to sit as honorary members of the association, and one of them was invited to deliver an address, which invitation was accepted. The venerable representative of the African element was received with cordial hand-shaking and escorted to the stand amidst enthusiastic applause. He spoke for about five minutes, and we must confess that his remarks were less fanatical and his language more polished than some of the white speakers who preceded him.

We were unable to attend the evening session, and know nothing of the programme of exercises. It is to be presumed, however, that the sentiments of the speakers were of the same ultra and fanatical character as those previously enunciated, and which stamped the convention as a negro-social-equality and negro suffrage assemblage, got together under false pretenses by a set of Yankee agitators who controlled all its deliberations.

Bayard Taylor relates the following amusing anecdote in his own experience in Arabia: While in Arabia I had a very remarkable experience. There is a drug in the East whose effect is like that of opium; it is prepared from the Indian hemp. It is much used by the Saracen warriors when about to enter a battle, as a stimulus. It produces the imagination of a double consciousness; one part of the mind seems to study while the other looks on. From motives of curiousity, I was persuaded to try the effects of it on my system. I was in Damascus at the time. Soon after taking the drug, the effect of it began to appear. I saw the furniture in the room, talking with the company, and yet I seemed to be near the pyramid of Cheops, whose blocks of stone appeared to be like huge squares of Virginia tobacco. The scene changed, and I was on the desert in a boat of mother of pearl. The sand seemed grains of gold, though my boat run as easily as on the waves of the sea; the air seemed filled with harmonies of the sweetest music; the atmosphere was filled with odors and music. Before me seemed to be a constant arcade of rainbows through which, for fifteen years, I seemed to glide. The finer senses were developed, and all gratifications was a single harmonious sensation. Hence we can easily conceive the origin of the Arabian Nights; My companion, a huge Kentuckian, tried the drug with amusing effect. After looking at me for a while, he started up with the exclamation, "I'm a locomotive," and began to cut off his words like the puff of an engine, and work like the moving of the wheels. At last he seized the water jug for a drink, but set it down with a yell, saying, "how can I take in water into my boiler when I am letting off steam?"

The Democratic State Convention which assembled at Harrisburg on Thursday last did its work well and faithfully. The candidates presented by it for the suffrages of the people of the State are known throughout its borders as two of the bravest of the many gallant Pennsylvanians who rushed to arms in defence of an imperilled nationality. The Convention acted wisely, in selecting from the number of competent gentlemen named for the respective offices to be filled those who, in addition to all requisite qualifications of integrity, honesty and capacity, have so well and faithfully served their country on the field of battle. The nominations are such as we can most heartily endorse and support, and we shall to the extent of our ability, labor assiduously to bring about their triumphant election. The resolutions embrace the true and time-honored principles of the party, and were adopted unanimously with much enthusiasm.

Col. W.W.H. Davis was born in Bucks county where he now resides, and he is a son of Gen. John Davis, of that county, whose name is familiar to the people of the State. He received his education at, and graduated from the Military Academy at Norwich, and was shortly thereafter appointed Professor of Mathematics and Military instructor at the Military Academy of Portsmouth, Va., in which position he remained for a period of two years, when he resigned and returned to his native county, studied law and was admitted to practice. On the breaking out of the war with Mexico, he enlisted in a regiment then being raised by Hon. Caleb Cushing, was made Adjutant of the regiment, and served with efficiency during the war; participating in all the great battles in that country, which shed so much lustre upon the American arms. He was rewarded for his gallantry by promotion to a Captaincy.

In 1853 he was appointed by President Pierce, District Attorney for the Territory of New Mexico. In 1854 he was appointed Secretary of State for that Territory and was acting Governor and Superintendent of Indian affairs until 1857 when he resigned.

Of the career of Col. Davis, since the breaking out of the rebellion, we take from the Patriot and Union the following sketch: When the rebellion commenced, in 1861, Colonel Davis immediately volunteered his services, and raised the first armed man in his native county and congressional district. With a company of eighty (80) men he immediately marched to Harrisburg, joined the 25th Pennsylvania regiment, and served throughout the three months campaign in the army of the Upper Potomac, commanded by Major General Patterson. At the expiration of his term of service in September 1861 he was mustered out, and returning to Bucks county, immediately raised a regiment of infantry, 104th Pa., and a six gun battery, under special instructions from the War Department. On the 1st of November, 1861, he proceeded to Washington with his regiment, and was immediately placed in command of a brigade, from which time he continued in active service (except when disabled by his wounds) until the 1st of October, 1864, when he was mustered out, by reason of the expiration of his term of service.

His gallant regiment served one year in the Army of the Potomac and was afterwards transferred to the Army of North Carolina, then to South Caroliina. Colonel D. commanded a brigade or division during the greater part of three years. He was severely wounded by a rifle ball in the left elbow at the terrible battle of Fair Oaks, and was also shot in the left breast by a spent ball at the same engagement. The Colonel participated in all the operations before Charleston, commanding a brigade or division during the entire period.

From the first day of January to the 1st of April, he had command of the siege operations on Morris Island directed against Charleston, having under his command a division of three brigades, and in July 1864, at the battle of John's Island, S.C., his right hand was carried away by a shell. --While serving in the Department of the South Colonel Davis had, at different periods, command of Folly Island, Beaufort and the District of Hilton Head. The colors of his regiment, now among the archives of the Commonwealth, bear the names of Yorktown, Lee's Mills, Chickahominy, Savage Station, Fair Oaks, Seven Pines, White Oak Swamp, Carter's Hill, James Island, Morris Island, seige of Charleston, and John's Island.

Col. John P. Linton, the candidate for Surveyor General, is a citizen and native of Cambria county; a lawyer by profession, honest, upright, and a fair specimen of the incorruptible Democracy of that mountain region. From the same paper we learn of him that in 1861, when the war was [unclear] upon the country, he was a lieutenant of a holiday volunteer company. Mainly through his efforts the organization was retained, the company recruited to the maximum number, and, upon the declination of other officers, he was unanimously proclaimed captain. With his company he faithfully served during the three months' campaign.

At the termination of the three months' campaign, Cols. Linton, Campbell and McDermott at once recruited a regiment, (th 54th and the officers were soon after, in August, 1861, commissioned as follows: Colonel, Jacob M. Campbell; (Republican candidate for Surveyor General;) Lieutenant Colonel, Bernard McDermott; (one of the soldiers of the war with Mexico;) Major, John P. Linton. Subsequently Col. McDermott resigned on account of ill health, which, on February 1st, 1863, advanced Major Linton to the position of Lieutenant Colonel.

The regiment was immediately assigned to duty the along Baltimore & Ohio Railroad. During the whole of the early period of the war when the mouth of the Shenandoah Valley was the scene of constant alarms and raids, the 54th Regiment was stretched as a cordon of protection to the lower tier of Pennsylvania counties. We have not time nor space in this article to follow the regiment through its later history; this will afford matter for subsequent articles. It is sufficient to say that after about two years of detached service, the regiment was ordered to take part in the active operations up the Valley. During most of this latter and more active period of service, Colonel Campbell was away from the regiment--in temporary command of a division or brigade, it is stated--so that Col. Linton had the honor of leading the 54th in the battles of Newmarket and Piedmont. And most bravely and gallantly he led his regiment on those disastrous fields. In both those battles he was severely wounded.

When the 54th was subsequently ordered to the front, before Petersburg, Col. Linton, we believe, still retained direct command and again led his men in those hard-fought engagements which proved so disastrous to that gallant old regiment.

Such, Fellow Democrats, are the men who have been chosen by the convention of our party as the standard bearers in the conquest about to commence. They are men of capacity, honest, upright and withal brave and true, who shrunk not from the post of danger at the call of their country and whose scarred bodies attest the patriotism of as noble a pair of Democrats as ever lived. They deserve well of their country. They compose a white man's ticket on a white man's platform. See to it then, that such a majority be rolled up for them on the second Tuesday of October next as will forever dismay the advocates of the detestable doctrine of negro suffrage.

It is the current talk in Wall street that preparations are maturing for an organized pressure on Congress to modify the national banking law, and enlarge the amount of currency permitted to be issued under it. With a currency so redundant that gold is at a premium of forty-four percent, this project is absurd. The arguments in its favor are, that so much of the currency authorized by the existing law has been issued to the banks in some of the states, that an equal apportionment is no longer possible without an enlargement of the total amount and that a great vacum exists in the Southern States into which the exhausted fountain cannot flow without replenishment.

We are against this scheme for the further robbery of the laboring classes, and the further enriching of speculators; against it whether the facts alleged are true, or whether they are false. Unless there has been malversation by the Secretary of the Treasury, they cannot be true, in and such sense as to require the authorization of more currency. By the law as it stands, one-half of the whole amount authorized was to be distributed among national banks organized in the several States and territories in the ratio of population, and the other half according to the wealth and commercial wants of particular localities ar determined by the discretion of the Secretary of the Treasury. If the Secretary has done his duty, according to his oath, he has reserved for each of the Southern States its proportion of the one-half, together with a discretionary reservation for the prospective wants of New Orleans, Charleston, and other commercial centres. If he has not done this, it will be the duty of Congress to appoint a committee of investigation, and arraign him for malfeasance; if he has the pretexts for enlargement are false.

The paramount need of the country, and especially of the laboring masses, is a curtailment of the currency, which will so bring down the prices of commodities as to enable them to save part of their earnings, and make their savings safe when lent out at interest or invested. At present, they can, with the utmost industry and self-denial, save but little, and that little melts away under an expanding currency, like a chunk of ice on a sun-heated side-pavement, Some three months ago, gold was down to 125, and we seemed fairly in the way to a sound currency. But it is now upward of 145, with the prospect of a still further rise. It is by taking advantage of such fluctuations in the value of money, that sharpers and speculators acquire sudden riches; and every dollar that they make comes out of the earnings of labor.

Let us illustrate the operation of our unstable currency by a simple example, intelligible to every laboring man. If three months ago, when gold was 125, a frugal laborer had but $100 in a savings bank, the interest at 5 per cent, the usual rate of such institutions, would be one dollar and twenty-five cents. The principal when he lent it was worth $80 in gold; and now when it has been on interst three months, the principal and interest together amount to less than $71 in gold, making a dead loss of $9 in gold or 13 in our present currency. It is in this way that the people are robbed of the fruits of their labor.

We protest against all schemes for the further dilution of the currency. A fluctuating representative of values is demoralizing to the business classes, and ruinous to the honest laboring masses. Mr. Webster, more than thirty years ago, described, with his habitual vigor of statement, the operation of so inflated, fluctuating currency. What he understood so clearly from history and philosophy, we unhappily know from observation and bitter experience. We command his impressive language to the earnest attention of the industrious classes; we ask them to mark, as from their own knowledge they can, the truth of its representations.

"The very man," said Mr. Webster, "of all others, who has the deepest interest in a sound currency and who suffers most by mischievous legislation in money matters, is the man who earns his daily bread by his daily toil. A depreciated currency, changes of prices, paper money falling between morning and noon, and falling still lower between noon and night--these things constitute the very-harvest time of speculators, and of the whole race of those who are at once idle and crafty; and of that other race, too, the Catalines, of all times, marked, so as to be known forever by one stroke of the historians pen, men greedy of other men's property and prodigal of their own. Capitalists may outlive such times. They may either prey on the earnings of labor by their cent, per cent, or they may hoard. But the laboring man--what can he hoard? Preying on nobody, he becomes the prey of all. --His property is in his hands. His reliance, his fund, his productive freehold, his all, is his labor. Whether he works on his own small capital or another's, his living is still earned by his idustry; and when the money of the country becomes depreciated and debased, whether it be adulterated coin or paper without credit, that industry is robbed of its reward. "He then labors for a country whose laws cheat him out of his bread."

How forcibly expressed! and how true! the laboring masses have great reason to complain of taxation; of its burdensome impositions and its unequal distribution. --But what are taxes in comparison to this legalized robbery? The people expected the close of the war would bring deliverance, or at least an apporach towards deliverance. but instead of tapering to a point, the evil is enlarging, and a herd of speculators are planning and contriving to make it worse and worse. But even apart from their contrivances, its has been for three months of peace, and, as we are told, of reduced expenditures, growing steadily worse. It is the most oppressive of all the inflictions to which a government can subject the great mass of the people. The government cannot lock them all up in military prisons. It cannot hang or shoot them all without trial by jury. If it taxes heavily and even unequally people can make some calculation of what they will be compelled to pay. But when the dollar shrinks, in time of peace, at the rate of forty per cent, per annum, and nobody can foresee its future fluctuations, and this for the benefit, not of the government, but of speculators, it is next to intolerable. When, oh when are we to have a sound, honest, Democratic currency, that does not rob the people of their hard earnings.

On the organization of the Republican party the New York Herald dubbed its members, "Black-Republicans." Time has proved the appropriateness of the appellation. The efforts of that party are now directed to making a Black Republic of the United States. Are the white freemen of the country willing to share political power with the miserable, ignorant and degraded African? That is the question at issue, Democracy and a white mans government; Republicanism and negro equality. Choose ye between them.