Editorials: How to Stop Agitation; The Chicago Zouaves-The Most Serviceable Military Drill (7/17/1860)

Hon. S. SEYMOUR, late State Engineer, and a prominent member of the American party, comes out in support of the DOUGLAS ticket. His leading reason for so doing is a desire to suppress further agitation of the Slavery question in Congress. He thinks the only way of doing this is by giving the practical control of it to the people of the specific localities concerned, whether States or Territories: -- and he, therefore, desires to install the Popular Sovereignty principle by electing its most prominent indorser and advocate. His letter to Col. FORNEY, which we publish elsewhere, states his view of the case clearly and distinctly.

How to stop the agitation?

You can’t.

Avoiding the conflict and/or appeasement have Never worked in history. You can defer it but never avoid it.

Now “unconditional surrender” like in WWII is not perfect either. But it has some advantages that overweigh the cons, at least I think so.

Folks, there is going to be a fight. Lets get it started and over with.

Do your mental rehearsal, get used to the idea in your own mind. Stand up when you can in many little skirmishes. Realize your freedom and responsibility are going to cost you.

Have a CLEAR IDEA OF WHAT YOU ARE FIGHTING FOR like our founding fathers did. Not like the French revolution which is the position of the opposition.

A house divided cannot stand..............it will be all one or all the other.

How to stop the agitation?

DEFUND IT.

This is a funded operation with logistical and intelligence support.

You find its source and you cut it off. Donald Trump hasn’t taken a stupid breath in his entire life. He’s on it.

By the way, I saw an interview Adam Carolla did of Don Jr. Impressive man. The real deal. Dad had him digging ditches and doing construction - every job - from the time he was 15. “If you are going to own buildings, best you understand exactly how they are built. So start building son.”

Avid bowhunter. Admits he’s a giant pu**y compared to his dad, who can work any dozen men under the table.

Interesting interview. By contrast, the interview Adam Carolla did with Gavin Newsome was fascinating. Logic is to Newsome like water is to Gortex.

July 17, 1860. Daily Intelligencer, Wheeling, Virginia [later West Virginia].

An April 1859 letter by Lincoln about Thomas Jefferson and how the two major parties have changed positions. From Column 3 in the newspaper:

Mr. Lincoln on Jeffersonlan Democracy.

The following letter from Abraham Lincoln was written in reply to an invitation to attend the “Jefferson Dinner" given at [can’t read].

Springfield, Ill., April 6, 1859

Gentlemen:--Your kind note, inviting me to attend a festival in Boston, on the 13th inst. In honor of the birthday of Thomas Jefferson, was duly received. My engagements are such that I cannot attend. Bearing mind that seventy years ago two great political parties were first formed in this country; that Thomas Jefferson was the head of one of them and Boston the headquarters of the other, it is both curious and interesting that those supposed to descend politically from the party opposed to Jefferson, should now be celebrating his birthday in their own original seat of empire, while those claiming political from him have nearly ceased to breathe his name everywhere.

Remembering, too, that the Jefferson party was formed upon its supposed superior devotion to the personal rights of men, holding the rights of property to be secondarv only, and greatly inferior; and then assuming that the so-called Democracy of to-day are the Jefferson, and their opponents the anti-Jefferson parties, it will be equally interesting to note how completely the two have changed ground as to the principle upon which they were originally supposed to be divided.

The Democracy of to-day held the liberty of one man to be absolutely nothing, when in conflict with another man's right of property. Republicans, on the contrary are for both the man and the dollar, but in case of conflict the man before the dollar.

But soberly, it is no child’s play to save the principles of Jefferson from total overthrow in this nation.

One would state with great confidence that he could convince any sane child that the simpler propositions of Euclid are true; but nevertheless he would fail, with one who should deny the definitions and axioms of free society. And yet they are denied and evaded, with no small show success. One dashingly calls them “glittering generalities.” Another bluntly styles them "self evident lies,". And others insiduously argue that they apply only to "superior races."

These expressions, differing in form, are identical in object and effect -- the supplanting the principles of free government, and restoring those of classification, caste and legitimacy. They would delight a convocation of crowned heads plotting against the people. They are the vanguard, the sappers and miners, of returning despotism. We must repulse them, or they will subjugate us.

This is a world of compensations; and he who would be no slave must consent to have no slave. Those who deny freedom others deserve it not for themselves; and, under a just God, cannot long retain it.

All honor to Jefferson -- to the man who, the concrete pressure of a struggle for national independence by a single people, had the coolness, forecast and capacity to introduce into a merely revolutionary document an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times, and so to enbalm it there, that to-day, and in all coming days, it shall be a rebuke and a stumbling block the very harbingers of reappearing tyranny and oppression.

Your obedient servant,
A. Lincoln.

rustbucket quoting A.Lincoln: " Bearing mind that seventy years ago two great political parties were first formed in this country; that Thomas Jefferson was the head of one of them and Boston the headquarters of the other, it is both curious and interesting that those supposed to descend politically from the party opposed to Jefferson, should now be celebrating his birthday in their own original seat of empire, while those claiming political from him have nearly ceased to breathe his name everywhere."

Wow! Doubly true today. Thanks for that post.

Sadly, Jefferson's record is mixed & contradictory, brilliant in many respects, troubling in others -- surprise! Jefferson was a human being, not a demigod.

Now if you've followed my posts at all, then you know I resolve the Jeffersonian contradictions with the simplest possible explanation: the side we admire was inherited by Federalists-Whigs-Republicans -- as Lincoln's letter here illustrates -- the side which troubles us descended onto historical & modern Democrats.

The Democrats until recently have been celebrating Jefferson-Jackson Day as a fund raiser for their party. Here is Bernie Sanders at one of them in 2015. Link to Bernie

Democrats claiming Jefferson always struck me, a lifelong Republican and conservative, as strange.

Recently Democrats have dropped the Jefferson-Jackson name and have started calling it "The Liberty and Justice Celebration." Apparently Democrats can't have themselves celebrating a slave holder, much less their own racist history during my lifetime. They would probably like to forget their honoring of old KKK Robert Byrd, too.

I have problems with some of the things the old Federalist Party did, principally their objection to the Bill of Rights, their use of their Sedition Act against opposition newspapers, and their switch to the "We the People" preamble. I preferred the old "preamble" [link to August 1787 version] approved by the Convention before a number of Anti-Federalists departed.

As you know, I despise the various unconstitutional things done by Lincoln and some of the things done by the Republican Party of those early days.

I occasionally post newspaper items on these pre Civil War newspaper threads of Homer J. Simpson, like Lincoln's letter I posted that you quoted from. One of my earlier posts on Simpson's historical newspaper threads was a post about how those early Republicans used the same tactics used nowadays by Adam Schiff. Here is a link to my earlier post: see Post 4

Here is the text of that Post 4 taken from the June 22, 1860 Bedford Gazette of Bedford, Pennsylvania about Republican Representative John Covode and his antics.

The Covode Committee falling into Contempt.
The effort made by the self-righteous Covode to bring the Administration of President Buchanan into disrepute, through the instrumentality of a one-sided, partizan Committee, under the modus operandi of which, the said Covode was suffered to be prosecutor, witness, attorney, judge and part of the jury, has excited nothing but the contempt of all intelligent and liberal minded men. Many of the Opposition newspapers regard Covode as an arrant hypocrite and deprecate his bare-faced attempt to make party capital at the expense of the honor and character of our government.
The following from the Philadelphia Evening Journal, the organ of the Bell party in Philadelphia, we commend to the admirers of the immaculate Covode:
"The fact is, as every unprejudiced and/discerning man must see, that the present "Republican" majority in the House of Representatives, have employed their power during this session of Congress, chiefly in ex parte inquisitions into the conduct of the President and his Cabinet, in which the inquisitorial committees were packed with the enemies of the accused parties, whose action was so shaped as to elicit every fact that was likely to discredit the Administration, while every fact that would have been exculpatory, was suppressed. And all this was done, too, with the foreknowledge that whatever the result of the inquest might be, the parties originating it had the power, by a final vote in the House, to pass and record a sentence of condemnation, and with a foregone purpose to give the whole proceedings that damning issue.
The event, as exhibited in the resolutions passed yesterday, in censure of the President and the Secretary of the Navy, has consummated the design of the conspirators, and the journals of Congress are again disgraced with a denunciatory judgment, pronounced against the Executive of the nation, by a partisan majority in one branch of the Legislature, against every principle of constitutional right and power, and every rule of ordinary judicial propriety and justice.
Comment on this shameful abuse of the power of a majority in a single chamber of Congress is unnecessary. It is a striking example of abuse in those who have set themselves up as the special reformers of abuses. Those who will audaciously transgress all established limitations of legislative jurisdiction, and usurp functions denied to them by the fundamental law of the Government, for the purpose of exercising a malignant and dishonorable censorship over a co-ordinate department of the Administration, are not fit to be trusted with too much power. Moreover, the people will doubtless see that the whole aim of the "Covode," and other like has been to bring the President and his Constitutional advisers into public contempt, merely to provoke a counter current of feeling in favor of the "Republican" party, and, perceiving this fact, we trust that the only and real purpose of a shameful scheme of persecution will fail of realization.”

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.