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REV. A. J. RYAN, Editor-
AUGUSTA, GA, AUGUST 1,1 M
THE QUADRENNIAL ELECTION—WHAT
IS IT?
Every four years the Americans have
a errand Presidential election. The whole
country is changed into a vast amphithe
atre, or lecture room, domed by the blue
vault of Heaven, where spirits white,
black, and gray, mount the rostrum and
instruct the dear people, teaching them
like children, educating them up to the
momentuous issues of the day, the ande _
nouement, like a college exhibition, to
come off in November. What a magnifi
cent spectacle when seen from afar '•
Rich and poor, intelligent and igno
rant, a whole Nation in tact, assembled
like a Congress of Ambassadors, listen
ing for four months to the exposition of
the broad principles of Liberty, and the
checks and guarantees against oppression
and despotism—to the unfolding of the
theories of finance, of taxes, and to all
the the great questions of political econ
omy—mighty, resistless orators, pa
triots who, on bended knees at night,
prayed God, that the effort of the coming
day would show the fruits of so many
months of hard study, and would direct
their countrymen to adopt those measures
which would best insure the Government
in fulfilling its mission—in attaining that
proud position among the sisterhood of
States, which its obligation to high moral
laws, and its benignant protection of all
alike, high and low, justly entitle it.
But, alas! this is a picture seen from
the inverted end of the telescope. On
the contrary, at every Presidential elec
tion the country turns out, like at a race
course or cock-fight, where betting and
blackening of character are among the
minor evils. This moral, Puritanical
people, become a great concourse of gam
blers ; men, women, and children, all
bet on the election, men stake on this
game their thousands, and little boys their
five cents and marbles.
Doctrines and ideas of all kinds are
preached and believed,and every creed,like
a sudden original proposition,is questioned
and its merits canvassed. Nothing, for the
moment, is true, sacred, or holy. Every
Dogma that ever consoled or tortured the
ingenuity of man has to come down from
the Altar of Truth, to pass through the
Plebeian crucible of public opinion. And
the inconsistency. Man on the stump,
asking for votes to-day, is true, noble,
an emanating scintillation from the Deity
—the American Eagle soaring still on
high, his eye glistening in the noonday
sun, and his bosom bathed in the clouds,
looks with proud complacency on the “best
Government the sun ever shone upon.”
But the next day, at the Meeting
or Church, man is depraved, incapable of
a good action; the country mourning in
sack-cloth and ashes, and into the
Eagles aerie lias crawled a dirty, filthy
Buzzard, our true emblem, that revels
and feeds on corruption from the charnel
house at Washington. Can both sides of
the picture be true ? Is not Truth one ?
If man be depraved and incapable of
good before God, on Sunday, is he not
equally so at the hustings before his fel
man ? lie cannot be good vis-a vis his
country, and bad before God, nor vice
versa. Truth is one, and harmonizes
with other truths. Let us start from
axioms, revealed truth, confirmed and
linked together by the unbroken chain of
tradition, and no amount of accurate de
velopment, nor logical analysis, will or
can put our politics in contradiction with
our religion. Once get them to go hand
in hand, and the mighty destiny of this
country is on the path of realization,
The responsibility of the American
politician and statesman is far from being
small. He takes the boy after he be
comes a man, and there, on the stump, by
the elegance of his address, and the
witchery of words, poisons the mind of
the public by doctrines that would dis
grace a respectable Pagan. Think you,
because office is attained, and your candi
date elected, the moral law trampled
under foot and violated, here or here
after, Justice will not assert her preroga’
tive and have the violator or trifler pun
ished? Frivolity, that bane of all mixed
Government, where Religion exists not to
compel obedience to law,and to counteract
liberty' when running to license, as the
subtle virus that has tainted all the
streams of science, and has so spread its
deadly Upas over this country, even till
gangrene is fast setting in. There is
frivolity in everything. The light, yel
low-covered literature; the cheap, infidel
science, that tries to doubt that it doubts;
frivolity in education; and even frivolity
in the practice of religion.
Bear with us a moment, whilst we en
deavor to find the cause of this frivolity.
In the exact sciences, mathematics for
instance, we find none of these frivolous
amateurs, who talk a conscious superior
ty and glibness that would make Quin
tillion stare and gasp. Why ? In math
ematics we have a few axioms, fundamen
tal truths, that no one doubts, yet no one
can prove, that all admit firmly and fixed
ly, without ifs or ands; and upon this
small basis,by close logic is built the huge,
massive, Doric superstructure of mathe
matics, You begin by believing some
thing, and then you proceed developing
and analyzing. This is Catholic. We
start off, believing the catechism; we com
mence ontologically, though we do not
wholly discard psychslogy. Hence, in the
exact sciences, there arc no outside ama
teurs, pour faix Vesprit fort, and to
throw obloquy on Truth,or ridiculeYirtue*
Everything is certain; the moment a
doubt arises, it is tested by facts known,
compared with the old landmarks, and
the dispute is for ever settled. The sys
tem that has rendered science impassible
(for politics is a science,) and certainty in
everything uncertain, was, in a measure,
commenced by that robust fellow of Wur
temberg, but more particularly put forth
by him who dressed the lair Goddess of
Science in beautiful gauze, and placed her
on the pedestal of doubt. From doubt
nothing but doubt can come, and all sub
sequent study is tainted with the bastar
dy of doubt. Alas, for Descartes and
his cogito ergo sum.
It would be easy to show, from this
frivolity, that the late war produced no
gigantic minds that could grapple with
the mighty issues of the contest, and
bend the exigencies of the times to the
wants of a people hungering for Lib
erty. We allude not to pure military
men, for Stonewall Jackson, who sleeps
in his grave, enshrouded in “the Con
querrcd Banner,” will always bring the
pearly drop from the moist eye ol the
old Confederate. We allude to the Cabi
net on either side of the line, whether at
Richmond or Washington. Lnsound
philosophy, defective education, and gen
eral frivolity, can do nothing, however
varied and sound the material it has, upon
which to work. The country is not de
ficient in mind, but it is in its training
and in its method. When we believe not
undoubtingly, we can never throw the
whole soul of our energies into an en
terprise, nor will we adhere to the prin
ciples and wreck of our cause, when the
cargo is lost. hen Gen. Robt. L. Lee
wrote to his son at school, “Duty is the
sublimest word in our language,” lie con
veyed a depth of Philosophy more than
meets the eye. There can be no duty
on one side, without correlative right on
the other. Right is never opposed to
right. And when oppression trampled
down the young Confederacy, drank up
her life-blood, and, vampire-like, has ever
since sucked her impoverished veins of
every remnant of sustenance, placed
upon her fair, unwilling form, a Negro
Constitution, the shirt of Nessus, never to
mmii m ffliHsim
be removed but by a Herculean effort,
which will leave the fair form of em
body politic all quivering in every limb,
and bleeding from every pore; unless we
bow the proud head in submission and
kiss the rod that chastises. Still, we sub
mit and suffer, but feel the keen sting like
a wound. We do not murmur, though
wronged; and this is sublimer than duty—
’tis sacrifice. Our parole told us to go
home (home?) jind the United States
would protect and guarantee us in our
rights—we have kept our word; has the
Government kept hers? There is a moral
obligation on the part of the Government
to fulfill her contracts, or we are absolved
from our duty. The contract has been
broken—wo have performed our part of
the bargain—who has a right to rebel
now ?
Junius says in the shipwreck of State
everything solid and weighty sinks to the
bottom, and is lost forever; whilst trifles
light, airy, and rotten, float on the sur
face, and are preserved. It must be so in
our case. The first minds of the South,
those which were true to their states, liked
and cherished her behests as a boy obeys
his mother; who went forth like the
youths of Lacsedemon in obedience to her
laws, prompt in the ranks at the first tap
of the drum, and remained until our or
ders came to cease; which alone could
have compelled our obedience; these and
their kindred dead, were they alive, all,
all, woald stand disfranchised to-day, and
at this election. And with all this viola
tion of equity and justice, iniquity is
added as embroidery. The Southern
mind, which, heretofore, left its impress on
every important piece of legislation that
benefitted the country—the Southern
gentleman who left Congress in 18G1, to
join the army of his home, left the coun
try in whose service he had devoted the
energies of his mind, powerful at home,
respected and feared abroad, and without
a cent of debt, finds to-day his place in
the Councils of the Nation occupied by
bis former slave.
When the care and direction of the
ship of State is taken from the Captain
and Pilot, its proper officers, and turned
over to the galley-slaves oil board, who
were to be transported to Liberia,
or Van Dieman’s Land, it requires
no prophetic or telescopic view into
futurity, to see what will become of
the ship. When the feet, not the head,
rule, when the intelligence, honesty, and
truth, of the South are disfranchised,
and the ebon-skin and gizzard foot sent
(no pun,) to the General Assembly,we may
expect legislation on the the level of the
terrapin. Exnihilo nihil fit.
OUR EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS.
Why do not our people give their pa
tronage to their own local institutions ?
How expect our institutions of learning
to prosper, if from them we withdraw that
support upon which they depend? In
the main, are they not as well officered,
and as wisely conducted, as the edu
cational establishments of the North ?
We know they are; and still, as former
ly, so now we have reason to complain
of the lack of that substantial support
which they deserve, and which is neces
sary, not only for their prosperity, but
for their very existence. It has always
been our fault, and neither the late war
nor time has yet remedied it. By our
patronage, we secure the stability of in
stitutions a thousand miles away, while,
by our culpable neglect, we let our own
drag out a precarious existence. It
should not be so. Founded, as our home
institutions have been, in our midst, and
for our benefit, we should feel an especial
interest iu their prosperity; and, depend
ing, as they do, on ourselves for their
success, we should do all in our power to
secure it. It seems that “ distance lends
enchantment to the view,” in regard to
educational institutions, as well as in re
gard to scenery. Many of our people
seem to imagine that the farther away a
college or boarding-school is situated, the
better it is to send our children to them.
There is not, in the South, a pride in
home institutions. A teacher from the
North is more patronized in our own
midst, than one of our own people. By
no means do we wish to disparage North
ern teachers or institutions, but we do
think that our own teachers and our
own schools should be our first choice,
and that, as a general rule, the children
of the South should bo taught and
trained in the institutions of the South.
Apart from many reasons which we
might, if we wished, adduce in favor of
this course, there is one not without great
weight, which, we are sure, will pei
suade many to uphold our o*tvn institu
tions. Local attachments, and, in par
ticular, our love for birth-place, are cer
tain to be much weakened, if not alto
gether destroyed, by years of absence
in distant educational institutions. Our
own land becomes a stranger land to us—
and the land of the stranger becomes
our home. Ties binding us to our coun
try are sundered; new associations take
the place of the old; and then gradually
grows up an indifference to the interests
of the land that gave us birth. This
alone should be motive cogent enough
to keep the children of the South in the
South—to have them taught and trained
by Southern minds in Southern in
stitutions, and to have them thus
drink in, with every lesson and from
every page of every book, more and more
love for their native land. Institutions
enough, and good enough, we possess.
Teachers we have who will compare fa
vorably with any others. And all they
need to do their work for Southern edu
cation is Southern support. If they fail,
the fault is ours who fail them. If they
succeed, the praise is ours, who support
them.
We call on our people, most urgently,
to give their preference to their own insti
tutions. Let Southern minds educate
Southern minds. Let Southern boys and
girls be trained in Southern schools, and
thus you will keep the rising generation
Southern in spirit, and in character, and
in principles, and in sentiments; and
thus, deep in the hearts of the young, you
will lay the foundation which the future
will yet need for the building up of a
Southern Nation.
THE DEMOCRATIC NOMINATIONS.
GENERAL FRANK BLAIR’S LETTER ACCEPT
ING THE NOMINATION FOR VICE PRESI
DENT.
Omaha, Nebraska, July 13, 1868.
General George IF. Morgan , Chairman
Committee National Democratic Con
vention :
General : —I take the earliest oppor
tunity of replying to your letter, notifying
me of my nomination for Vhe President
of the United States by the National Dem
ocratic Convention, recently held in the
city of New York.
I accept without hesitation the nomina
tion tendered in a manner so gratifying,
and give you and the committee my thanks
for the very kind and complimentary lan
guage in which you have conveyed to me
the decision of the Convention.
I have carefully read the resolutions
adopted by the Convention, and most cor
dially concur in every principle and senti
ment they announce.
My opinion upon all of the questions
which discriminatethe great contending
parties have been freely expressed on all
suitable occasions, and I do not deem it
necessary at this time to reiterate them.
The issues upon which the contest turns
are clear, and cannot be obscured or dis
torted by the sophistries of our adversa
ries. They all resolve themselves into the
old and ever-renewing struggle of a few
men to absorb the political power of the
nation. This effort, under every conceiva
ble name and disguise, has always charac
terized the opponents of the Democratic
party, but at no time has the attempt as
sumed a shape so open and daring as in
this contest. The adversaries of free and
constitutional government, in defiance of
the express language of the Constitution,
have erected a military despotism in ten
of the States of the Union, have taken
from the President the powers vested in
him by the supreme law, aud have de
prived the Supreme Court of its jurisdic
tion. The right of trial by jury, and the
great writ of right, the habeas corpus —
shields of safety for every citizen, and
which have descended to us from the ear
liest traditions of our ancestors, and which
our revolutionary fathers sought to secure
to their posterity forever in the fundament
al charter of our liberties —have been
ruthlessly trampled under foot by the
fragment of a Congress. Whole States
and communities of people of our own race
have been attainted, convicted, condemned
and deprived of their rights as citizens,
without presentment, ortrial, cr witnesses,
but by Congressional enactment of ex post
facto laws, and iu defiance of the constitu-
tional prohibition denying even to a f u ]j
and legal Congress the authority to p a „' s
any bill of' attainder or ex post facto law"
The same usurping authority has suLsril
tuted as electors in place of the men of'ou r
own race, thus illegally attainted and diV.
franchised, a host of ignorant negroes
who are supported in idleness with the
public money, and combined together to
strip the white race of their birthright
through the management of Freedn.en
Bureaus and the emissaries of conspire
tors in other States; and, to complete ch «
oppression, the military power of the
nation has been placed at their disposal, ; n
order to make this barbarism supreme.
The military leader under whose prestige
this usurping Congress has taken refuge
since the condemnation of their schemes
by the free people of the North in the
elections of the last year and whom t , y
have selected as their candidate to shield
themselves from the result of their own
wickedness and crime, has announced his
acceptance of the nomination, and his
willingness to maintain their usurpations
over eight millions of white people at the
South, fixed to the earth with his bayonets.
He exclaims: “Let us have peace.''
“Peace reigns in Warsaw,” was the an
nouncement which the doom of
the liberties of a nation. ‘The Empire :s
peace,” exclaimed Bonaparte, when free
dom and its defenders expired under the
sharp edge of his sword. The peace to
which Grant invites us is the peace of
despotism and death.
Those who seek to restore the Constitu
tion by executing the will of the people
condemning the reconstruction acts,already
pronounced in the elections of last year,
and which will, lam convinced, be still
more emphatically expressed by the elec
tion of' the Democratic candidate as the
President of the United States, are de
nounced as revolutionists by partisans
of this vindictive Congress. Negro suf
frage, which the popular vote of New
York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio,
Michigan, Connecticut, and other States
have condemned as expressly against the
letter of the Constitution, must stand, be
cause their Senators and Representatives
have willed it. If the people shall again
condemn these atrocious measures by the
election of the Democratic candidate for
President, they must not be disturbed, al
though decided to be unconstitutional by
the Supreme Court, and although the
President is sworn to maintain and support
the Constitution. The will of a fraction
of a Congress, reinforced with its partisan
emissaries sent to the South and sup
ported there by the soldiery, must stand
against the will of the people and the de
cision of the Supreme Court, and the sol
emn oath of the President to maintain and
support the Constitution.
It is revolutionary to execute the will of
the people. It is revolutionary to execute
the judgment of the Supreme Court! It
is revolutionary in the President to keep
inviolate his oath to sustain the Constitu
tion ! This false construction of the vital
principle of our Government is the last
resort of those who would have their arbi
trary reconstruction sway and supersede
our time-honored institutions. The nation
will say the Constitution must be restored,
and the will of the people again prevail.
The appeal to the peaceful ballot to attain
this end is not war, is not revolution.
They make war and revolution who at
tempt to arrest this quiet mode of putting
aside military despotism and the usurpa
tions of a fragment of a Congress, asserting
absolute power over that benign system of
regulated liberty left us by our fathers.
This must be allowed to take its course.
This is the only road to peace. It wiii
come with the election of the Democratic
candidate, and not with the election of that
mailed warrior, whose bayonets are now at
the throats of eight millions of people in
the South, to compel them to support
him as a candidate for the Presidency, and
to submit to the domination of an alien
race of semi-barbarous men. No perver
sion of truth or audacity of misrepresenta
tion can exceed that which hails this can
didate in arms as an angel of peace.
I am, very respectfully,
Your most obedient servant,
Frank P. Blair.
Corrcspond.encc Nevj York Sun.
GOV. SEYMOUR AT HOME.
THE GOVERNOR’S RESIDENCE—IIIS STATE
MENTS IN REGARD TO THE CONVENTION.
Utica, N. Y., July 20, 1868.— Horatio
Seymour is just now possessed of a great
number of friends, and before the ide> ot
November will have a great many more,
all of whom are and will be very anxious to
see him. Already the number seeding
him to profess their love for him is some
thing remarkable.
“The Governor,” as the Democratic
nominee is familiarly known by all h*
friends and neighbors—and that inclu les
pretty much everybody iu this region-'
“The Governor” resides in a plain, m;p - '
tending farm cottage, about two
north of and overlooking the city oH k-
Something iu the outward appearance •
the house, though not exactly in the arch'
tccture, something in the pastoral air tnat
surrounds it,something in the approacn : •
it, and in the view from the verandah ra
stretches along its front —something th
is in all these features of the Governor
home, that, while not affording parti a
-of resemblance, inevitably eg
one’s mind Mount \ ernou. A snug 1
farm of about three hundred and fifty a l '
surrounding the rural retreat has bm n
property of Mr. Seymour and hisanee-t; :/
for half a century. The house in wnioi
the proprietor now resides was built 1
tenant of the farm, and when, a few yeai-