Showing posts with label The Copperhead Constitution. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Copperhead Constitution. Show all posts

Saturday, March 29, 2014

From Cairo and Halleck’s Army

(Special to the Chicago Journal.)
CAIRO, May 20.

The steamer Platte Valley, from Pittsburg Landing Monday a. m., has just arrived, but brings nothing important.  Heavy cannonading was heard at the Landing on Sunday night, but no significance was attached to it.  The usual skirmishing occurs daily, but no general engagement is anticipated for some days.

Under the operation of Gen. Halleck’s recent order, an advance guard of Bohemians arrived this morning.  The remainder of the corps, numbering about twenty, is expected to-day, all correspondents having been excluded from within the lines.

The Commissioners to received the votes of Illinois troops on the new Constitution returned from below to-day.  They took the votes of the Illinois soldiers stationed at Columbus and Hickman.  Nearly twelve hundred votes were polled, of which over nine hundred were against its adoption.  It is significant that most of those voting against it are democrats.

Published in The Davenport Daily Gazette, Davenport, Iowa, Thursday Morning, May 22, 1862, p. 1

Thursday, February 6, 2014

Corp. Danforth, of the R.[ock] I.[sland] Argus . . .

. . . is rather distressed that the GAZETTE should express an opinion on the Illinois Constitution.  As he concludes his jeremiade [sic] with the reflection that we are following in the wake of the Chicago Tribune, we began to think that after all we cannot be very far wrong, as the Tribune is certainly next to the Argus in intelligence.

Published in The Davenport Daily Gazette, Davenport, Iowa, Tuesday Morning, May 20, 1862, p. 2

Sunday, December 22, 2013

The Illinois New Constitution

The statement industriously circulated that a number of Illinois regiments have voted almost unanimously for the new constitution, is wholly untrue.  It was set afloat in order to discourage opposition to the instrument.  The two regiments on the Potomac – 8th cavalry and the 39th infantry – are understood to be unanimous against it.  Letters from Springfield say that there is a high probability that it will be defeated – the nullifying section of article 2, and the extraordinary clause giving Justice’s of the Peace authority to imprison citizens for 30 days without appeal, being extremely unpopular. – Wash. Dispatch N. Y. Trib. 14th.

– Published in The Davenport Daily Gazette, Davenport, Iowa, Monday Morning, May 19, 1862, p. 2

Thursday, January 12, 2012

Iowa Items

Lansing, Alamakee county, was visited by an extensive conflagration on the night of the 28th ult., burning about a dozen buildings, including a number of stores.  An attempt was made on the 21st ult., to burn a warehouse containing 7,000 or 8,000 bushels of wheat; but the attempt was unsuccessful, though the wheat was much damaged.

Cedar River is on a big “high.”  At Cedar Falls, a rail bridge was carried away and it was with difficulty the bridge over the river there was saved; and a number of buildings were in great danger of being washed off.  At last accounts the river was still booming, and threatening serious damage.

In the Legislature, last Saturday, Mr. Shipman asked leave to introduce a resolution replacing the article in the constitution which fixes the capital at Des Moines.  Leave not granted.

The Keokuk Constitution says it would be a perversion of the English language to call kidnapping a free negro and making a slave of him stealing.  Of course, it would be equally a perversion of the language to call killing such a person murder.  Claggett must be getting up a dictionary.

The Keokuk Constitution, in a long leader, admits the soundness of the Republican doctrine that slavery is local, not national, and contends that it has always been a Democratic doctrine!  There’s progress for you.  It won’t be five years before our opponents will be claiming all the rest of the Chicago platform, and swearing they never believed in anything else.  O! most facile party!

– Published in The Davenport Daily Gazette, Davenport, Iowa, Saturday Morning, April 12, 1862, p. 2

Wednesday, November 9, 2011

The Republican Party

The Republicans, as a political organization, have a family resemblance to the old Whig party, so much so that we sometimes have wondered if a man who at heart had ever been an old line Whig, could honestly turn square around and put his neck into the same yoke with men whom for long years he had bitterly denounced as everything that was corrupt, rather than act with the Republican party.  The chief point in which our present political associates resemble those with whom we formerly affiliated, is in that disposition they occasionally manifest to repose confidence in the honesty or uprightness of the Democratic party.

In Ohio, Illinois, and it may be in some other States, the Democrats found themselves at the last election, from the inevitable destiny of their principles, sadly in the minority.  What they could not effect by hard fighting, they determined to accomplish by cool stratagem; so proposed to the Republicans of these States, that as the war was for the Union, political matters should be shelved, and all unite in one common party and elect men on the ground of their capability and without regard to past political associations.  The bait was so tempting to the good Republicans of those States, they having the weal of their country at heart and, perhaps, not possessing the sagacity of the older politicians of the Empire State, that they eagerly swallowed it.  Of course they were caught, as the Democrats afterwards, true to their party instincts, made use of the Union movement to foist into power men of their own stripe.

In the Constitutional Convention that has just adjourned in Illinois, and in the unsuccessful effort to re-elect Ben. Wade in Ohio, we see some of the fruits of this strange alliance, and if the Republicans of these States are ever again caught with such chaff, they will deserve to suffer the consequences.  The effort to similarly seduce the Republicans of Iowa signally failed, and since they have observed the consequences in other localities and learned that the movement was wholly preconcerted, they have perhaps taken more credit to themselves than they really deserve.

This weakness of the Republican party, inherited possibly from the old Whig party, of placing reliance in anything emanating from the Democratic leaders, when power or influence is at stake, has been so seriously punished that it should be a lesson for all time to come, under no circumstances or for any purpose, to affiliate with the Democrats, especially under the new regime when Democracy and Slavery, by their own show, are recognized as synonyms.

– Published in The Davenport Daily Gazette, Davenport, Iowa, Friday Morning, April 4, 1862, p. 2

Tuesday, October 25, 2011

WASHINGTON, March 31 [1862].

HOUSE. – Mr. Washburn, of Ill., presented a memorial from the Illinois constitutional convention, in favor of the early enlargement of the Ill. and Mich. Canal.  The memorial was referred to the committee on military affairs.

The consideration of the Pacific RR. Bill was further postponed until Tuesday.

– Published in The Davenport Daily Gazette, Davenport, Iowa, Wednesday Morning, April 2, 1862, p. 1

Tuesday, October 18, 2011

SPRINGFIELD, ILL., Feb. 5 [1862].

The Convention occupied this afternoon in discussing the amendment of Mr. Wentworth to Judge Purple’s report, first section.

Mr. Orme finished his speech, defending and defining the vested rights of banks.

Mr. Fuller took Mr. Wentworth’s side of the question, and the question being put, Mr. Wentworth’s amendment was sustained – 35 to 27.

Mr. Wentworth offered another amendment, preventing banking corporations making an assignment, giving preferences to creditors, also to prevent the stockholders of a bank from making assignments to the bank.  Unanimously adopted.

So far Wentworth has carried every assault of his on the banks, and if the Constitution leaves them as the amendments to Judge Purple’s report now stands, the banks are effectively wiped out.

– Published in The Dubuque Herald, Dubuque, Iowa, Friday Morning, February 7, 1862, p. 1