The New Democratic Party

With the prospect of a speedy close of the war, and the knowledge that the old Democratic party is among the things of the past, the former leaders of that political organization, as we have seen, are making an effort to reconstruct it.  As the Republican party is already in the field, with its principles intensified by the terrible disasters brought upon our country through slavery, if a new party be formed it must take ground in opposition to the one already organized.  The character of the men who have taken this work in hand is significant of the principles that the newly constructed Democracy will maintain.  A man who has been throughout the war just as much of a secessionist as he dare and retain his seat in Congress, Vallandigham of Ohio, is the putative father of this movement.  He was the chairman of the committee appointed to draft the new articles of organization and he produced them already prepared from his pocket.

It is right and proper in a Republic that two parties should exist, and it is better for the government if neither party is too largely in the ascendant.  The Democratic party cannot strictly be reorganized.  A new political party can be constructed and christened with the old name, but the principles that the Democratic party so many years contended for, have perished with the causes that produced them.  The only ground therefore, upon which a new Democratic party can be organized, is one that will array itself against the Republican party, and as the latter’s principles are of unquestionable anti-slavery character, the new party must take a position in favor of that institution.  We don’t suppose its principles will come in contact with the constitution any more than do those of the Republicans. – Charges that have been harped upon by the doughface press, of Republican hostility to the constitution is, is political claptrap, the lowest species of bar-room demagogueism.

The movement started by Vallandigham & Co. is being freely endorsed throughout the North by that portion of the Democratic press which at heart is secession.  They are beginning already to marshal their forces, to organize their party and have it in readiness when peace once more spreads her wings over our country, to take their “Southern brethren” by the hand and welcome them into an organization founded professedly for the maintenance of their rights.  All attempts to convert the Southern States into territories, or even to proportion the federal taxes among them, will be resisted by this new party, as its leading idea is to be recognized by the Southern States as a friend, which is the only way in which it can hope to secure strength sufficient to oppose with a show of success the Republican party.

All those who are opposed to the advance of slavery, or who favor its constitutional abolition, should be very careful not to commit themselves to a party in its incipiency.  Once identified with a party, and it is next to impossible for a man to separate himself from it.  It requires a strength of mind, an independence of thought and action, that but few men possess.  The fact of having belonged to the old Democratic party, should not cause any man to feel as if this new political organization, which has assumed the name without any of the principles of that party, has any hold upon him.  If he is opposed to the institution of slavery, if he thinks our country has been sufficiently cursed with its operations, his place is in the Republican party.  But if he is fully impressed with the idea that slavery had nothing to do with this war, that it is emphatically a divine institution and a blessing to our common country, then let him seek his associates in the newly constructed Democratic party.

– Published in The Davenport Daily Gazette, Davenport, Iowa, Tuesday Morning, April 8, 1862, p. 2