Valley Spirit

Money has been scarce in the inland towns all summer, and it is every day growing scarcer. The spring trade was dull; there was hardly any summer trade at all, and the hoped for revival in the fall has not come. The prospect ahead of business men is very dreary, and it is feared that this will be one of the worst winters that poor people have had to encounter for a long period of years.

This is the news that comes to us from all quarters. If misery could be relieved by company, the business men of Chambersburg might experience relief from the knowledge that business is stagnant and money scarce in all the inland towns throughout the Union. But this knowledge affords no relief, for it furnishes no aid in the payment of notes and drafts.

Those who wish to know why it is that business is so dull and money so scarce in the interior of the country, may learn the cause by reading the speech of Gov. Seymour. That speech shows that the middle and western parts of the country are suffering from the unwise legislation of the party that has ruled the country for the last seven or eight years.

This party destroyed the State Banks and set up National Banks in their stead. Under the old system, each State could establish as many Banks and authorize the issue of as much currency as the wants of its inhabitants required. But under the National Banking system set up by the Radicals, only a certain amount of Bank notes can be issued; and instead of apportioning these among the several States, according to the wants of the inhabitants thereof, they were given out to those who were the first to apply for them. The New England States, with characteristic greed, made haste to organize Banks under the new law, and gobbled up an undue proportion of the National Currency. Gov. Seymour shows that Massachusetts sucked up fifty seven millions of it, while Illinois, with double her population, got only ten millions. Rhode Island has forty dollars of this currency to every one of her inhabitants, whilst States in the middle and west have only ten dollars to each inhabitant.

Thus it comes that money is scarce and business dull in the middle and western States, whilst capital is piled up in the hands of the Banks and Brokers in the eastern cities, where it is used in speculations that make the rich richer and the poor poorer.

The Radical leaders cling with great tenacity to the financial system they inaugurated. There is no hope for the business men of the interior so long as that system prevails. There must be a more equal distribution of currency and a more equal distribution of taxation, or widespread disaster will ensue. A change is needed--a change of measures and of men. The election of Gen. Grant means a continuance of the evils which are now pressing the business men of the interior to the earth. The election of Gov. Seymour would bring a change of policy which would work a revival of business and make money plenty where there is now a great want of it.

Let business men read Seymour's speech and study it well. Let them consider the financial situation very carefully before they cast their votes in November.

We hope that every Democrat, and every conservative Republican who believes with us that a change is needed in the administration of national affairs, will turn out on Tuesday next and vote for Seymour and Blair.

Times are hard and getting harder; money is scarce and getting scarcer; taxes are high and getting higher the government expenses are enormous and growing worse; the public debt is fearful and being augmented every month; the Radical Congress is squandering the people's money and Radical office holders are stealing half the revenues they collect.

The public welfare demands a change. Honest Republicans who vote with the dishonest crew who are plundering the people will regret the act all the days of their life. Their eyes will ere long be opened to their error. Those who vote for Seymour and Blair--for the immediate restoration of the Union--for the reduction of government expenditures and the consequent reduction of the public debt--for the lightening of taxation--for the more equal distribution of currency and the revival of business that would result therefrom--these will have no cause to reproach themselves, let matters go as they will. They can rest in the consciousness that they performed their duty. If evil ensues, the fault will not be theirs.

The Radical Congress refused to vote one dollar for the relief of the citizens of Chambersburg whose property was carried away or burned by the Rebels. The same Congress has voted twelve million dollars a year to the negroes of the South, which is distributed to them by the Freedmen's Bureau.

Nearly everybody in Chambersburg is pinched for money. Our business men have a terrible struggle to sustain themselves. If the Radical Congress had given to the sufferers here just one million of the twelve millions it has given every year to the Southern Negroes who did not suffer at all, everything would go easy with the people of Chambersburg.

Can any Radical give a good reason why millions should be appropriated every year for the Southern Negroes, while not one dollar is given to the White sufferers of Chambersburg? We would like to know the reason, if one exists. Can the Repository give it? Can any of the Radical orators give it?

A memorial, it will be remembered, was sent from this place to Congress, setting forth the sufferings of our people and praying for relief. Gen. Koontz presented it and endeavored to get a favorable report upon it from the committee to which it was referred. John A. Bingham, of Ohio, and other leading Radical members of Congress, were on that committee. They refused to report in its favor. Bingham was strongly against it. With his big fee in one pocket for prosecuting Mrs. Surratt to the gallows, and his $5,000 for one year's service in Congress in the other, he felt too comfortable to concern himself about the poor White people of Chambersburg. But his bowels of compassion were deeply moved when the appropriation for the Freedmen's Bureau came up, and he voted to invest twelve millions more of the people's money for the benefit of the Southern Negroes, just after he had refused to vote one dollar to us.

Do the people of Chambersburg really want indemnity for their losses? Do the people of the rest of Franklin county want indemnity for theirs? If so, how should they vote in order to get it?

John A. Bingham is regarded by his friends as a great lawyer. If Grant should be elected to the Presidency, Bingham would be urged upon him for Attorney General, and in all probability he would be appointed. What advice would he give the President upon the indemnity question? After going against us in Congress, would he be likely to go for us in the Cabinet? And if the Radicals in Congress care so little about us as to give us nothing when a Presidential election is coming on, notwithstanding all their anxiety to obtain votes, what have we to expect from them after they get another four year lease of power?

It is very probable that what we are saying on this subject will be disregarded by every Radical voter in Chambersburg and throughout the county. It is to be feared that party prejudice and party drill will blind them to their own vital interests. We perform our duty, however, in warning them against voting for the candidates of the party which, through its representatives in Congress, has refused them indemnity for their losses, whilst it has squandered millions upon Negroes who had no claim to one cent from the National treasury. If they would rather vote for Grant and give twelve millions a year to the Negroes, than vote for Seymour and secure a million or two for themselves, there is no help for it. But what a sight it is to see intelligent white men voting so directly against their own interests!

The Radicals are running Gen. Grant solely on his military record. To help them to a proper conception of his military genius, we commend to their perusal the following extract from Mr. Greeley's book entitled "The Great American Conflict," where, in describing one of Grant's assaults upon the Confederate lines, it is thus related:

"Twenty minutes after the first fire fully ten thousand of our men were stretched and writhing on the sod, or still and calm in death, while the enemy's loss was probably little more than one thousand. And when, hours later, orders were sent to each corps commander to renew the assault at once, without regard to any order, the men simply and unanimously refused to obey it. They knew that success was hopeless, and the attempt to gain it murderous, hence they refused to be sacrificed to no purpose!"

What a commentary on the generalship of the Radical candidate. And let it be remembered that the commentator is Horace Greeley. The survivors of that ten minute conflict, though as brave men as ever trod the earth, refused to advance again. Their good sense saw what the profound military genius of Gen. Grant failed to perceive, that to assault the enemy again was to run upon useless slaughter, and they refused to be sacrificed merely to gratify the obstinacy of their commander. What other American General ever had the mortification to see his positive order countermanded by the unanimous action of his whole army?

The negro has not yet been admitted to the ballot box in Pennsylvania. Fully one-half of the Republicans in the State, if interrogated to-day, would say that they would never consent to his admission to it. Yet these same Republicans will vote for Grant, and so vote to sustain the Radical reconstruction policy, whereby the negroes in the Southern States have been admitted to the ballot box. The negroes in those States have not merely been put upon an equality with the white people and given the power to contend with them at the polls upon equal terms. They have been given the entire control of the ballot box and it expresses their will alone.

Do the Republicans of Pennsylvania flatter themselves that because the negro does not vote in this State he does not stand upon terms of equality with them? True, he does not elbow them at their voting places. He does not spread his perfume around their polls. His ivories do not shine like a polished steel-trap through the window where their ballots are taken in. But in those places where the destinies of the nation are decided, he meets them on terms of equality and speaks in a voice as potential as theirs.

There will be Senators in the United States Senate on the fourth of March next, who were elected by negro members of the Legislatures of Southern States. There will be members of the House who were elected by the direct votes of negroes at the ballot box. Each Senator thus elected by negroes in the Legislature, and each member thus elected by negroes at the polls, will have a voice and a vote equal to each Senator and each member elected by the white people of Pennsylvania.

To this position of political equality with the intelligent white men of the North have the ignorant negroes of the South been elevated by the reconstruction policy of the Radicals. Every Northern man who votes for Grant votes to weigh a Southern negro in the scale against himself. And what is worse, he gives the negro a chance to outweigh him. In one of the Southern States, the negro population does not equal the population of a single county in Pennsylvania. And yet those few thousand negroes will have two Senators of the United States, the same as the three million whites of Pennsylvania or the four million whites of New York. One Florida negro will balance the power of forty or fifty white Pennsylvanians in the United States Senate under Radical reconstruction.

Many Republicans look upon this elevation of the Southern negroes merely as a deserved degradation of the Rebels. They overlook the fact that it is also a degradation of the white people of the North. We confess our fear that they will continue to look at it in a wrong light, and only awake to a true view of it when they find Negro Equality fastened upon the country beyond their power to shake it off. Negro Equality did we say? Let us say Negro Superiority, for that is what it amounts to when a few thousand Florida negroes can stifle the voice of three million white Pennsylvanians in the United States Senate.

All who are in favor of Negro Superiority will vote for Grant; and let no one who votes for Grant forget what he is voting for.

The Radicals make a habit of nominating renegades from Democracy under the impression that such nominations bring strength to their ticket. This is why they nominated John Cessna. Now mark the result in Bedford county. Cessna, for Congress, received 2658, and Sams, Radical candidate for County Surveyor, received 2668. Sams leads Cessna 10 votes!

In Franklin county the result was still worse for the renegade. Cessna received 4192 votes, whilst Lehman, the Radical candidate for Commissioner, received 4352. Lehman leads Cessna 160! Lehman has a majority of 90, whilst Cessna is beaten 211, making a difference against Cessna of 301.

Our Radical friends can study these figures at their leisure and decide for themselves whether it pays to purchase renegades at that price.

The following is from the pen of a workingman who voted for Mr. Lincoln:

CHAMBERSBURG,
Oct. 26th, 1868.

Messrs Editors:--It appears from the Daily Journals, that the gallant Seymour is making his way to the White House by a few of his able speeches, and that the people flock to hear him by tens of thousands. I am glad to hear that he has taken this method of opening the eyes of those who have been blinded by the misrepresentations of his political foes. There is no danger of the "silent Grant" imitating him in this particular. Seymour will have the whole lecture ground to himself so far as Useless Grant is concerned. I am sorry that Grant knows nothing much but fighting. Had he been an orator and statesman like Seymour, we should have had lively and interesting times before Election day, for there is no doubt that Grant is uneasy in his boots at this unlooked for change of programme. However, if Grant cannot talk much, he can fight some; and that seems to compensate the American people for his lack of speech, and statesmanlike qualities. Seymour, on the other hand, is no fighter of the bloody kind. He uses no deadly weapons. His voice and pen constitute the whole outfit of his fighting material. He reasons thus: that we have had fighting enough to satisfy this generation surely, if not, we shall need the "young Napoleon" in the field again, and not in the White House, where another of a different cast of mind is needed. What the American people are thinking about in wanting to make a President out of such raw material as Grant I know not. Surely out of this land of thirty-five million people we can find a better man for our chief magistrate than the hero of Vicksburg. If Grant be a good General, let him remain at the head of the Army and not make a fool of him by sending him to the White House. By making him President you spoil his usefulness. If Professor Agassiz was taken from his scientific labors, and compelled to earn his living by the degrading employment of working side by side with the Darkies on the roads, we should soon see the anomaly of his position when he ceased to benefit the world by his scientific researches. And so it would be with Grant, should we take him from the Army and try to make a statesman of him. How the American people, especially the laboring portion of them, can be so demented as to assist in the attempt to elevate to the highest position in the land such a stupid say-nothing as General Grant, simply because he has been a fighting character like a great many others, seems to me a puzzler. If being a great bruiser be a suitable qualification, then John Morrissy is richly entitled to his seat in Congress. The Republican party did not like Morrissy the Bruiser to occupy a seat in Congress. They said that he was unadapted for any such position; but what do they say of Grant the bruiser? they say that he is just the man for the Presidential office. What inconsistency! Then again; how should we appear in the eyes of distant nations if a tobacco smoking biped like Grant should be our first choice? They would be apt to say "what kind of people are those Americans, if Grant be their leading spirit?" Have they got no men of education and refinement in that land of many States and much boasting, that they are under the necessity of placing at the helm of a great nation a commonplace man? Are there no Seymours left, to shape the destinies of that great nation, and bring order and prosperity out of chaos and confusion, that they are obliged to bring forward a third or fourth rate man? Or is it the old tactics of expediency that they are resorting to again?

In the Lincoln case we know we chose a man of rough and unpolished exterior, but then we knew him to be a man of brain power. He was a man of some promise.--We had read his speeches in the Lincoln and Douglas controversies, and knew our man, because he opened his mouth and spoke the sentiments of his mind. But the only four words we can get out of Grant, is, "Let us have Peace." The sentence sounded to my ears when I first read it very like the last words of a dying man when his death bed is besieged by a ravenous crew of relations in quest of his wordly goods.--There is no doubt that Grant feels the ludicrousness of his position, but his ambition, like that of a great many others, prompts him to make a plunge at the White House even if he sinks in the attempt.

Hurrah! for Seymour, the workingman's friend. Let every workingman read carefully his speeches and judge for himself.--Be not led astray by a venal press. Seymour is the champion of progress. He wishes to see the humble and degraded classes raised to a higher intellectual standard, and not become worse degraded by competition with the colored race.
WORKINGMAN.

BASTROP, MOREHOUSE PARISH, LA.
October 14th, 1868.

Messrs. J.M. Cooper & Co.

Gentlemen:--According to promise as set forth in my two preceding letters to my friends and acquaintances in Path Valley and Amberson's Valley, and near Bossart's Mill in Franklin county, Pa., I proceed to show that the reconstruction acts were not only unnecessary, but were in violation of the rights and liberty of the white people South, and in their operation were destructive of the ends of free government in the South:

I now state that these reconstruction laws are an injury to the North. First, because their operation has been to retard the prosperity of the South, in this, the interference of strangers, to wit: Bureau agents, Resisters and their political agents, by their false promises to the negro of a division of lands and mules among them, have made many negroes lazy and idle, or at least impatient of labor, and by their improper teachings and fostering in them the idea of an opposition of interest to that of the whites, they have made many of them insolent and thieving and insubordinate and addicted to violence and crime, and in all cases they have impaired their efficiency as laborers. This, in connection with other causes, greatly damaged the agricultural interest, and through these all other interests in the North and South have been greatly damaged. This has made cotton dear, and all cotton fablics dearer in the North as well as here. It has nearly destroyed the market which the South furnished to the North, and has piled a higher tax upon the productive industry of the North. Again, the reconstruction laws have piled a mountain of taxes on all the Southern States, by protracted Conventions, and Legislatures composed of negroes and parties having no interest here, voting themselves large pay and making laws for party ends. The United States have not been benefitted by the taxes attempted to be collected down here. It is well known that not half of the taxes collected off the impoverished people down South, has ever reached the United States Treasury. This is known from the fact that all the agents here connected with the revenue and employed in distributing rations to the indigent whites and negroes, don't live in their extravagant manner on their salaries.

I know a sub-tax collector who, although always heretofore poor, is reported to be worth $50,000. He and all the agents of the Government here live like Princes. The principle collector of this district lives on the fat of the land--spends money with the profusion of a Prince, gives suppers that cost thousands of dollars in New Orleans, and is an aspirant for Congressional honors. All these agents dress splendidly, ride in fine carriages, smoke Havana segars, and always have abundance of money. It is known that they collude with one another and by means of false returns they pocket a large part of the money that would lighten your taxes if it were honestly applied. Of the large amount of rations voted by Congress for the destitute blacks and whites in the South, not the half of it is distributed among the people. I have a destitute family of blacks on my place this summer, and I know that the head of the family has not received rations sufficient for more than two months. He received only one and one-half barrels of meal and about twenty pounds of meat for two children and two adults. Now I have the information from an unquestionable source that some of the agents for the distribution of rations, offered to sell to a party hundreds of barrels of mess pork and divide the proceeds with him if he would sell it off on joint account.

I have just seen it stated in the papers that a report was recently made to the Legislature of La., that the murder of two or three negroes in this (Morehouse) parish is a matter of daily occurrence.

This is another slander of our people for political effect; for it is a most outrageous falsehood. I am sure that there have not been instances of murder in this parish in six months.

There have been within a year quite as many cases of the killing of white men by white men as the killing of negroes. It is utterly untrue that negroes are maltreated by white men, unless it is for some outrage or crime to which they have been prompted by radical agents and influence or by their savage nature. We need their labor, and we want their votes too much to treat them badly. J.B. MATTHEWS.

NEW YORK, October 20.

FELLOW CITIZENS: It is a privilege and duty to address you on the eve of the great battle which we are to fight, and which is to decide whether the Government of this Republic is to remain four years more in the hands of the Radical party, or whether by an energetic, united, and last effort you will wrest the power from its grasp, and give to us, under a Democratic Conservative administration, a Government based upon principles of justice, economy, and constitutional liberty.

The issues of the present campaign are plain and self-evident. They appeal to the intelligence and patriotism of every voter in the most unmistakable terms. They have been ably discussed by distinguished orators and leaders of our party since the nomination of our candidates.

What the Democratic party intends to do, if placed in power by your suffrages, is to restore peace and union to our country; to heal the wounds and sufferings caused by the rebellion; to give to the people of the South the rights to which they are entitled under the Constitution, and by which alone we can bring back prosperity and quiet to that distracted section; to reduce materially our military and naval establishments, kept up now on an immense scale and at an enormous cost; to introduce into every department of Government the strictest economy, and to develop, by an equitable system of imposts and taxation, the growing resources of of our country, and thus to place the Federal finances on a solid and stable footing and to pave the way to a gradual and safe return to specie payments. We are charged by the Radical party, the party of violence and usurpation which for the last four years, to plolong its own existence, has set at naught the Constitution and the fundamental principles of our Government, that we intend revolution and defiance of established laws. The accusation is unfounded and absurd; it cannot be entertained for a moment by any intelligent voter, who has even the most superficial knowledge of the history of his country. The Democratic party can proudly point to every page of its record. It has never violated a single obligation of the fundamental compact by which these United States entered into the family of nations. Its watchword, in peace as in war, has been and will always be the Union, the Constitution, and the Laws. And no man nor any set of men, however high they might be placed by the suffrages of their fellow citizens, can ever expect to receive the support of this great Conservative party in any revolutionary attempt against established laws. The ballot-box and the supreme will of the American people are the only means of redress to which we look.

Fellow Democrats! You are fighting for a good and righteous cause. You have for your leader a tried statesman; a patriot who stood by the Union in its darkest hour; a man equally beloved for the purity of his private character as honored for his public virtues.

Opposed to you are the men who have subverted the structure of our system of representative self-government, vindicated to the world by more than half a century of prosperity and greatness; the men who have increased our enormous debt by profligacy and corruption unparalleled; the men who in two successive Congresses have demonstrated their incompetency to diminish our burdens by economy or apportion them with equity; the men who have so distributed our burdens so as that they press with excessive weight upon the labor and industry of the country, making rich men richer by making poor men poorer.

Opposed to you are the men who have denied for three years of peace, and will continue to deny until your votes arrest them, self-government to the people of ten States; the men who have taken away the power of our Chief Magistrate to insure a faithful execution of the laws, or to command the army and the navy of the United States the men who did their worst to expel the President from the White House for obeying faithfully the behests of your supreme law; the men who, being conscious of their crimes, dreaded to have the Supreme Court declare their quality, and therefore abridged its jurisdiction and silenced its votes; the men who have usurped and are grasping and wielding powers not possessed to-day by any monarch among civilized nations.

Against these men and all their despotic purposes, which General Grant would be as powerless to hinder as he whom they elected four years ago has been; against these men, their crimes in the past, their fast accomplishing designs in the future, you are soon to make one final and determined onslaught.

Four years ago we failed to expel them from power, though we predicted then, as we now predict, their incompetency to give to the people peace; declaring then as we now declare, the revolutionary purposes of their most active leaders, who rule their party, as they would rule the country, with a despotic sway. But these four years have justified our warning. Our worst predictions then are enactments now. What we feared they have done. The revolution has made steady progress. Once more we call every patriot to join our ranks.

If the people will now rise in their majesty and might, they can save their institutions, and rebuild them. If they are supine and regardless of their sacred interests, so much in the last four years has been accomplisd, and so much in the next four years may easily be accomplished, no obstacle then remaining, that the Revolution will become a fixed fact, the structure of our government will have been completely remodeled. It may be a government; still it will no longer be your Representative Self-government.

For this final struggle then fellow Democrats of the United States, let us invigorate every muscle and nerve every heart. The time is short. The foe is stubborn and desperate, for our victory would be the death blow to the Republican party. It could have been held together by no other nomination. It cannot survive your successful assault. One victory is enough, your triumph in November will finally reestablish the Union and the Constitution for another generation of men; it will restore peace and good order to the South, prosperity to the North, and a wise and frugal rule to both. The great prize is worthy your most strenuous endeavor.

Our ranks are unbroken; our courage is unabated. Once more to the breach, and this time Victory!

For the Democratic National Committee.
AUGUST BELMONT.
Chairman.

Court opened on Monday morning of this week. His Honor, Judge King, presiding. Some fifty criminal cases are upon the docket, most of them, however, of a trivial nature.

The case of the Com. vs. George Benner, charged with the murder of John Lechrone, was continued, on motion of the Counsel for the Defendant, to the January Term.

The cases disposed of up to the time of going to press are as follows:

Com. vs. Charles G. Lowe, assault and battery. This was a case in which the Prosecutor, a man named Henry Treber, was proved to have been acting in a disorderly manner in the hotel of Defendant at Mercersburg. The Deft., after requesting him to leave took hold of him and put him out. Verdict--Not guilty, and Prosecutor to pay the cost of prosecution. Stenger for Com. Adams and Brewer for Deft.

Com. vs. George Brown and Andrew Meads, assault and battery. Wm. McKain Prosecutor. Verdict, guilty. Stenger for Com. Eyster and Orr for Defts.

"All Quiet Along the Potomac," but not along the Conococheague. Cessna came to town on Monday, and in the evening he squalled to a small squad of "Boys in Blue" away up in the third story of Austin's Bank Building, on the corner of the Diamond. We went out on New England Hill to listen to him. He made the windows rattle up West Market street, but as the wind was blowing eastward, we saved the drum of our ears without the aid of cotton. Cessna expressed great gratification at his election, because it was not only a triumph over his political enemies, but over the scalawags of the Valley Spirit and his personal enemies in the Democratic and Republican parties.

After paying his respects to these unfortunate creatures, he lowered his bovine head and with a loud bellow made a desperate charge at the poor Rebels. He put them to rout so completely that we doubt whether a Rebel Ram will ever venture up the Conococheague again to blockade the port of Chambersburg. Of course he flattered the "Boys in Blue" that during all the time when they were fighting under the flag from the summer of 1861 to the autumn of 1864, he was seeking office at the hands of this disloyal Democratic party--that at the very time when the battle of Gettysburg was raging, he was going about like a roaring lion, seeking to devour all other aspirants for the Democratic nomination for Governor. We believe he said nothing about running ten votes behind the Radical candidate for Suveryor in Bedford county.