The New “Democratic” Party

The Democrat misinterprets our motives in having acquainted our readers with the incipient treason that has given birth to a new party, christened with the once popular name of Democracy.  It is not that we have any fear that that party will ever acquire sufficient proportion to prove any very serious obstacle in way of men whose principles look alone to the welfare and prosperity of our country; but because we would not have the people rush blindly into a political organization labeled Democracy, but covering principles that never entered into the platform of the old Democratic party.  We would not have them, like a flock of sheep, follow the old political bell-weathers who are seeking to build up a party based upon a continuance of slavery.  It is true that the leaders of this newly-constructed party lug in devotion to country and maintenance of the constitution as a portion of their creed, but these are only the spices thrown in to disguise the taste of the nauseous dose that each poor victim is expected to swallow.

Political parties are generally based upon a love of country and the supremacy of the constitution, but in this case, as the movement originated wholly with men of questionable loyalty, and has for its prime object the conciliation of the rebels in arms against our Government, though we may credit the sincerity of the followers, we must doubt the patriotism of the leaders.  Deceived by the name Democracy, there are thousands and tens of thousands of people in the North, and our neighbor is f the number who would embrace it though it were but a cloak to cover as treasonable organization as the Knights of the Golden Circle. – The mass of the rank and file of the old Democratic party were notoriously the blind followers of leaders.  Power, supremacy, was to them of the first importance, principles were secondary.  This fact the leaders knew, but they counted too much upon it, and thousands of good men, who had been governed by principle, unwilling longer to submit to leaders so unscrupulous left the party and united with the Republicans.

Under the name of Democracy, its leaders sought to convert their followers into an organized band of pro-slavery men.  In the effort they so crippled their party that the republicans gained the ascendancy, but too late to prevent the inevitable result of the propagation of such principles as the democrats had maintained.  With the war pro-slaveryism became so unpopular that Democracy, which had sought to sustain it, was fain to hid its head in obscurity; but as peace dawns upon us, we see its ears begin to stick out and the same low-browed cranium make its appearance.  It bears upon its os frontis SLAVERY, and in the word we read its fate so plainly that it requires no Daniel to interpret it.  Let those who would not link their fate with a party that bears the skull and crossbones on its escutcheon, stop and consider.  Be not deluded by the name, it covers as rank poison as ever dwelt in the tip of adder’s tongue – the same for which our country now mourns the loss of so many brave men.  Like a pestilence it has swept over the country, and desolation has marked its track – wives, widowed, children orphaned, States impoverished, a nation, burthened with heavy debt, alike can point their finger at slavery and say, thou didst it!

– Published in The Davenport Daily Gazette, Davenport, Iowa, Friday Morning, April 11, 1862, p. 2