The Democratic members of Congress have issued an address to the democracy of the United States, urging the reorganization of the Democratic party, and opposing the union of the people, and the sinking of party divisions, for the support of the Government in establishing the authority of the Constitution and laws. – While over six hundred thousand Northern soldiers are offering their lives in the field to suppress this most formidable rebellion against constitutional government and hundreds of them are falling daily in battle, and from the diseases of camp and of climate, the Democratic members of Congress issued their circular, urging a party reorganization to cripple the government in the war and to make terms with the enemy.
There is in this address no word of condemnation for rebels who have covered the land with slaughter, and brought the nation to the brink of destruction, but it charges that the people who voted the traitors out of the Government which they had broken down by treason, were the cause of the rebellion. The means which it purposes for restoring the democratic party, are nothing less than to crush, under the name of Abolitionism, the sentiments of the entire people who do not regard Slavery as a moral and religious right, and are not willing to submit to it as a supreme political power in this Government, and to make terms with the Southern rebels, so as to restore them to the control of this nation.
In this specification, the cloven footed separation, and then detaching the Northwest and taking it into the Southern confederacy, so as to establish the supremacy of the Cotton States by a Confederacy which shall leave New England out, is still apparent. Even with all the glittering generalities of restoring the Democratic party under the name of restoring the Union this address cannot omit that feature of the original conspiracy. It need not have made its relationship with the original Secession plot any plainer. It says “Armies may break down the power of the confederate Government in the South, but the work of restoration can only be carried on through the political organization and the ballot in the North and West.
The meaning of this is, armies may defeat the Confederates in the field, but the Union cannot be restored except by putting a party in power in the North and West which will restore the rebels to political power. But why not as well by political organization and the ballot in the East, where this reorganization has quite as good chances as in the North and West? Simply because, even in this Democratic regeneration of all the Free States could be effected, it would not carry out the original plot, nor satisfy the southern demand. It must be a Confederacy with a majority of Salve States. This condition was declared by Mr. Pugh in his speech at the Washington birthday banquet at the Burnet House in 1861. He declared that the equal power of the South in the United States Senate must be restored, otherwise the union would never be restored. But his premises went even further than this he declared that when the Union was formed nearly all were Slave States, and he assumed that this status of slave representation in the Senate was one of the compromises of the Constitution, which had been violated by the modern preponderance of Free States in the Senate. Therefore his premises would require a large preponderance of Slave States, in order to restore the Union. It is supposed that a Confederacy leaving out New England, will make this preponderance, and when once made, the South will see that it is maintained.
That this plot is still entertained by those who adhere to the Democratic organization, anyone can see by the persistent attempts of their organs to excite sectional hostility between the West and East, and this condition of restoration laid down in this address, is the unmistakable ear mark of the original conspiracy.
The address predicates the necessity of the restoration of the Democratic party upon its past history, therefore its past history is the lesson of its future expectation, and the purposes. The restoration of the Democratic party is the restoration of the rebels to power, for every rebel leader was a leader in the Democratic party. It is the resurrection of a party which died of treason in Buchanan’s Administration, which the Cabinet officers were transferring the Government arms and property to the conspirators, disabling its forts so that they might be seized by traitors, robbing its treasury and even its sacred trust funds, sending its vessels to distant seas that it might be utterly defenseless, delivering up its navy yards and arsenals to rebels and bullying an imbecile President into driveling submission to the seizure of forts, arsenals, custom houses, post offices and public vessels.
The President of the Confederates was a Democratic Secretary of War, appointed and sustained by the Democratic party when his secession sentiments were as well known as they are now. Their Vice President was a Democratic leader in the House of Representatives in Congress. Their Cabinet officers were leading members of “the old Democratic party.” Their generals have nearly all been accustomed to command in the Democratic party. Their foreign agents are all democrats. Their Congress is ancient Democratic. Their principles are the same they held in the old Democratic party – the old Democratic Cabinet officers, foreign Ministers, Senators, Representatives and party leaders are, with few exceptions, among the confederate rebels, where they hold similar positions. But a remnant is left. There is where the old Democratic party has gone, and nothing less than a restoration of them to power will be the restoration of the old democratic party.
The “Old Democratic party,” is now the rebel confederacy, having carried into the operation the logical result of its doctrines. The only way that the Democratic party can be restored, is for the Government and the people to submit to the government of Jeff Davis. That is the feast to which the people are invited by this address of the remnant of bereaved democratic sympathizers in congress – this tag end of treason which astounded the world, and disgraced Republican institutions in the eyes of all mankind.
The Government almost throttled with treason, bound hand and foot and delivered up to traitors, the nation exposed to the insolence of foreign powers, because weakened by insurrection, the land covered with blood and devastation, thousands of Northern sons slaughtered on Southern soil, the country [shrouded] in morning, the loyal people of the South suffering barbarities which have hardly been paralleled in history, which inflict remorseless destruction on the property of every man suspected of fidelity, and spare no provision for helpless women or tender infancy, the mass of the people of the South, incited to a fiendish fanaticism that revels in the most horrible atrocities, both on living and dead, and which, if they could reach the north would delight in the indiscriminate massacre of the people, and the general devastation of their property, fierce sectional hate which may outlast generations, all the demoralization of war, millions of northern property robbed in the South, burdensome taxation, and a thousand millions of debt – these are the assets of the “old Democratic party,” these are a few of the items which that party has cost the country, and it is to such a history that this remnant of mourners for that organization appeal to show the necessity for its resurrection from a death of treason and a memory of infamy – {Cin. Gaz.
– Published in The Burlington, Weekly Hawk-Eye, Burlington, Iowa, Saturday, May 17, 1862, p. 1
