Reconstructed “Democracy”

The Democrat, in its issue of yesterday morning, still urges the members of the effete democratic party to rally in response to the call of Vallandigham & Co., and take position in the ranks of the reconstructed party, under these “staunch statesmen.”  It says, “there are to-day in the service of the country, bearing arms against this satanic rebellion, two democrats to one of all other creeds put together.”  Of course our neighbor knows and believes just what he states to be true.  As the democrats were largely in the minority before at the North, and tens of thousands of good men, who formerly acted with them would under “the exigencies of the times” scorn to affiliate with a party whose sole principle is the advocacy of the cause of all our woes; and as nine tenths of all the democrats who have enlisted in the war will return to their homes, if they come back at all, rampant abolitionists; we must still maintain that a party occupying the ground that the reconstructed democracy must assume, can never possess vitality in the free States of the North.  The Buffalo Express contains an article on the democratic party, from which we make the following extract:–

The democratic organization is now but a wreck of its former self.  It has neither principle, policy nor popular respect to rely upon to repair its broken fortunes.  Under the necessities of the government, its principles have been repudiated and its measures superseded.  Under the influence of a war which has ensued to quell a rebellion that democracy had incited, a heavy national debt is being incurred which will require every resource of impost duty and taxation to meet its demands.  Under this state of things, the free trade of dogma of that party is lost in the democratic storm.  The demand for a healthy and sound circulating medium equal to the wants of government and general business, has broken down the hard money scheme, which was the main spoke in the democratic wheel, and national paper currency “as good as gold,” supplies its place.  These were among the more prominent practical measures of the democratic party, and both have become effete.  It now falls back upon its last and only hope for the future – the institution of slavery – to save that as is future sheet-anchor.

This is evident in the clamor that constantly comes up from the press that disrupted party in its efforts to rally the faithful.  They cling to that institution with as much solicitude as they would protect the apple of their eye. – When we speak of the overthrow of slavery as the inevitable consequence of this war, a shudder comes over the anxious democrat, and he cries “Abolitionist!” and wildly points to the Constitution as an instrument to sacred to be violated, in the vain hope of rallying a prejudice that has served his party well in former times, but which has grown weaker and weaker under the attempts of that institution to strike down the Union, the Constitution and the power of the government.  The democratic party – that is, what there is left of its former self – shows “the ruling passion strong in death.”  It hugs slavery to its bosom, and both are to go down together.  They are as inseparable as the Siamese twins, and the peculiar institution will take with it to its final rest its lingering votaries who have nursed at its breast with a fatal persistence.  One grave will close over slavery and modern democracy, and one tomb stone will furnish for the two tenants but a single epitaph.

– Published in The Davenport Daily Gazette, Davenport, Iowa, Thursday Morning, April 3, 1862, p. 2