“Trouble In the Camp.”

The Democrat had a leader, last Friday, thus entitled which exhibited an astonishing amount either of ignorance or mendacity for even a Democratic paper.  The article opened by saying, “Some time since, the Republican abolition members of Congress voted unanimously to admit Senators Carlisle and Willey, from the new State (?) of Western Virginia.”  Those who paid any attention to political matters last summer will remember that after the expulsion of Mason and Hunter by the Senate, Messrs. Carlisle and Willey were chosen their successors by the loyal Legislature of Virginia assembled at Wheeling, and they were admitted to seats in the Senate as Senators, not from Western Virginia nor Eastern Virginia, nor Middle Virginia, but from the State of Virginia – the identical Old Dominion, and as such they sit there today.

The Democrat further says, that the Republican Senators voted to admit Messrs. Carlisle and Willey, because it was supposed they would add to the Republican strength in the Senate.  Will the Democrat be good enough to tell us what induced Messrs. Thomson, of New Jersey, Rice of Minnesota, and the two California Senators, Nesmith, of Oregon, Saulsbury, of Delaware, and in fact all the Democrats in the Senate whose loyalty is unquestioned, to vote with the Republicans on the question?  The fact is, these Senators were admitted because the loyal people of Virginia demanded it, and a refusal would have disfranchised that State and deprived her of her equal representation in the Senate.

The question of admitting the proposed State of Western Virginia into the Union is hence entirely distinct from that involved in the admission of Messrs. Carlisle and Willey to the Senate, and is compromised by no previous action of Congress whatever; and if the new commonwealth come before the country hugging to its bosom the demon of slavery, we hope Congress will close the door in its face until it shall conclude to make the Declaration of Independence and the spirit of the Constitution its basis of fundamental law.

– Published in The Davenport Daily Gazette, Davenport, Iowa, Monday Morning, April 7, 1862, p. 2