Democracy vs Doulocracy, Part 4

The Great American Question: Democracy vs Doulocracy

By William Wilson, A.M.

THE RESPONSIBILITIES WHICH AT PRESENT DEVOLVE UPON AMERICAN CITIZENS, IN RELATION TO THE GREAT CRISIS.

From what has been exhibited, in the preceding pages, and it is but a small part of the reality, it evidently appears that interest the most weighty are, under God, entrusted to their management. These are precious talents committed into our hands; and for their proper use we are strictly accountable “to Him with whom we have to do.” The greatest and most favored Nation under the sun is to be saved from disgrace and ruin; great principles and rights are to be asserted and vindicated, as well as great wrongs redressed and terminated and a future unwonted career of prosperity and honor is to be secured.¹ As these interests are now disposed of, so will be our future history; and, in a very important sense, that of all that the nations. If this crisis, which have been forced upon us, be properly met, it will prove to be our greatest blessing. The social body will thus throw off its loads of diseases, which has long enfeebled it, and would eventually destroy it, and again put forth the energies of renewed health and increased vigor. Liberty is now engaged in the most important moral conflict in which she has ever taken a part; and if she comes out of it with safety, with victory, and with eclat, all her future, anticipated triumphs may be regarded as certain. We act before many witnesses. The consequences of our conduct are infinite. As we sow now, so will be the future harvest.

In this great contest, each individual can do much for the right, prior to the election, and irrespective of his vote; or even of those who will not go to the polls at all. Whatever can properly be done, ought not to be omitted. Our responsibilities are commensurate with our ability and opportunities. Our youth may do much for the proper decision of this Great Question; and it is pleasing to know that they are so generally with us. The females of our land have a potential influence in shaping the destinies, and in forming the opinions, of society; they are happily on the side of righteousness in this case; and they will but give expression to their own intuitions and impulses, and act in their own amiable character, in going for “Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men, and Free Speech.” In the opposite there is nothing which, to them, ought not to be revolting. Ministers of the gospel of Christ, learned men, the conductors of the press, politicians, poets, artists and orators, are here deeply responsible. The cause of freedom is worthy of their best powers, and its advocacy furnishes one of the noblest fields of action. But, after all, the greatest responsibility rests upon the honest masses.

ONE VOTE has often decided the greatest questions, both in the civil and ecclesiastical world. It may do so at the approaching election. And he who may, and will not, cast his vote, in such as cause as this, for freedom, which is one of the highest privileges, as well as the most honorable and efficient, of a freeman; or who casts it for any man who is doubtful upon the great issue, incurs a responsibility too weighty for the shoulders of a mortal. Freedom “expects every man to do his duty.” Let all be at their posts. Let none say, “I am against the extension of slavery, but the decision of this Question does not depend upon me. I have no influence.” You have influence. Each individual has much for good or evil. Often has “the poor wise man delivered, by his wisdom, the besieged city;” for “wisdom is better than weapons of war; but one sinner destroyeth much good.” You are responsible your one vote. Covet, then, the honor of having its potent influence, in the righteous decision of this Momentous Question. Freemen of America have now ten talents placed in their hands. Let them see that they prepare to render a good account of their stewardship. “To whomsoever much is given, of the same shall much be required.” To treat liberty, in the hour of her need, with perfidy or indifference, would indicate that we were not worthy of enjoying her blessings. The Free North will not be guilty of the shameful treason.²

We are responsible to departed patriots, who “jeopardized their lives unto the death in the high places of the field”, in the cause of liberty against oppression; who left us this fair inheritance to cultivate, preserve and transmit to those who shall come after us; and who now look down, as deeply interested spectators, upon the part which we act in this great movement. Shame on us, if we desert or betray the cause, in defence of which they pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honors! We are responsible to all the living; for we act not merely for ourselves, but for our country and the world. We are responsible to the Supreme Ruler of Nations, who has endowed us with our great privileges; and who has now placed us in circumstances in which we may “play the men” for our country and our God. We are responsible for coming ages, and to those unborn millions who shall eat the fruit of our doings, whether our influence be now cast for liberty or slavery, as we do in relation to the generations which have preceded us on the journey of time. The freemen wields a tremendous power. You, my friend, will not employ it to extended the empire of doulocracy, even a hair’s breadth. You will form a different estimate of,

THE DUTIES WHICH AT PRESENT DEVOLVE UPON AMERICAN CITIZENS, IN RELATION TO THIS GREAT CRISIS.

The responsibility of our citizens being so great, the duties which they have to discharge, in this emergency, are obvious. Never was it more requisite that they should cherish a spirit of manly and free inquiry, both in relation to the principles and interests involved in this great issue, and the character and merits of the respective candidates for their suffrages. A powerful attempt is made, by interested partisans, to practise upon their unsuspecting credulity, and to make them the victims of the most gross deception. Let them be men in understanding. None can be imposed upon who do not wish it, and give their consent to it. The case is so plain, and the means of authentic information are so abundant, that every man may form a right judgment with respect to it, who can tell his own name. Let them boldly face the minions of fraud and the extension of doulocracy, distinctly giving them to understand, by their significant and searching interrogatories, that they are done with following implicitly the diction of the leaders of party, and will be their hacks no longer; and putting them to shame and silence by incontrovertible facts, and their unsophisticated arguments. It is said by doulocrats, whether of the Cass or Taylor camp, at the North, while those, at the South, say the opposite,³ “We are all for Free Soil, and utterly opposed to the extension of slavery, but the best way to accomplish these objects is, going with all our might for the election of our candidate for the Presidency”? Look at them with scrutinising astonishment, and laugh at their hypocrisy, and abortive attempt to run away with your judgement. Be not angry with them, but composed and tranquil. Tell them that, by so much as you approve of their avowed ends, you scorn and reject the means which they recommend, as utterly opposed to their accomplishment. What! Would you have us to believe that the best way to promote the cause of freedom, as the Question now stands, is to move heaven and earth to elect men who are chained to the car of doulocracy? Ask them when they became converted to the cause of Free Soil? If they reply, “We were always with it;” then call their attention to the general conduct of the Baltimore and Philadelphia Conventions; and particularly to the binding of Mr. Cass to the South, by the former, with his own consent, as the condition of his received its farcical nomination, and the laying on the table, by the latter, a resolution, after they had nominated a Southern planter and extensive slave holder, by way of demonstrating their sincere devotion to the interests of freedom in this great contest, in favor of the Wilmot Proviso. Tell them you cannot be caught with such chaff, but will vote for the men who represent, beyond all doubt, your principles. If they persist in urging you to stultify yourself, and to prove recreant to liberty in her hour of need ; and allege that “the Question is now settled by the act of Congress establishing a government for Oregon, by which slavery is forever and unconditionally excluded from it, so that there is nothing to be gained by the election of Van Buren and Adams now; that it is wrong to represent them as the only candidates of Free Soil; and that you ought to vote, now that the Question is satisfactorily settled, for one or the other of the regular nominations.” Confront them by the inquiry, “How was it settled”? And point them to the clear evidence that that act of Congress, and its signature by a Southern and slaveholding President, was the result of the moral earthquake produced by the Buffalo Convention; and the first of the series of signal triumphs which await the genuine opponents of doulocracy, and the friends of the unconditional freedom all of our territories, until their candidates are inaugurated into the high offices to which they have been designated and destined, as peculiarly worthy to occupy⁴ - that it places both houses of Congress and the President, in direct antagonism to the Baltimore and Philadelphia Conventions, their nominees and their partisans, by determining afresh the point in dispute at present, whether Congress has a right to exclude slavery from the territories, in favor of the maligned and persecuted friends of Free Soil- and that you will take special care that the profit of this first victory shall not enure [sic] to doulocrats or their representatives, but to those who, in the hour of your country’s peril and darkness, boldy planted themselves in the breach, and said to slavery, “Hitherto shalt thou come, and no farther: and here shall thy dark and accursed empire be stayed.” Conceal not from them your exultation at this, the first fruits, nor your assured expectation of a glorious harvest. If they reply to your objection to the Northern man because he holds Southern principles, which, as the issue is now made up, you consider as completely rendering him unworthy of the vote at least of any individual who resides on this side of “Mason and Dixon’s line,” that Martin Van Buren was once such himself. Confound and silence them by the truth, that circumstances are now changed, and that what might then have been just and expedient, is altogether indefensible and inadmissible now. Do they reply to your objection to the Southern man because he has no principles, that “the Taylor platform is, that the action of Congress ought not to be controlled and thwarted by the President; that, if elected, he will not exercise the monarchical power of the Veto; and that you ought to vote for him because he is a second Washington, and a very clever slaveholder, but to be sure to have representatives in the National Legislature in favor of excluding slavery from the territories, and, as he will let them do as they please, everything will thus, in the end, come right”? Tell them, with perfect good nature, that you are sure that General Taylor neither says, nor intends, any such thing as that he will, in no case, employ the veto; that if he did, he would not be for going according to the Constitution, which he does say will be strictly the rule of his administration, in the event of his election; and that, for yourself, you consider the provision made for the interposition of the Presidential veto, in the circumstances enumerated, as an excellent Republican check, and conservative power, which may, indeed, be abused by its indiscreet exercise; but that no fair argument can be drawn from its abuse, against its legitimate use- that it is clear that he would gladly exercise this power, were Congress to exclude slavery from the territories- that you could see no particular resemblance between Zachary Taylor and George Washington- that you could not consistently be in favor of him, and of a Congress opposed to him upon the Great Question of the Nation, and of the Age- that you are not in the habit of doing less important business in this way; and, as the only enlightened and safe course, you will vote for Van Buren and Adams-  and that it is well known that the power and patronage of the President are so great, that Congress rarely seeks to pass a bill in opposition to his known views, and still more rarely succeed in accomplishing it. Do the doulocrats, of either class, say, “Your cause is right, and nothing can prevent its success at the election succeeding this; but there is not now time enough to carry it through; and if you go with us now, we will go with you in 1852”? Reply, that there is time enough, if men will but worthily act out their deep and avowed convictions; and that, for one, as you have no lease of your life, and know not that you will have another opportunity, you are determined to discharge your known duty in the present canvass. Do they impeach you as a deserter from their party, and endeavor to entangle you again in its meshes? Let them know that the old issues are now no longer before the people; and that their late National Conventions, with their own consenting to their deeds, dissolved the two great parties of Democrats and Whigs: the former by allowing colonel Commander to cast all the votes of South Carolina for Cass, without due authority, and by excluding all the votes of the freemen of New York, which would have been against him, contrary to the usages of the democratic party, in order to have a candidate who is avowedly with the South on this Great Question; so that not having the vote of two-thirds of that Convention, which according to its own rule was indispensable to a nomination, he is not, in fact, regularly before the people at all for their suffrages, and therefore no allegiance is due to them nor support to him, but the contrary; and the latter, by the nomination of Taylor, through the adroit manoeuvre of the Louisiana delegation, although he had declared he was unalterably a no-party candidate, and by their refusal to assert any of their formerly acknowledged principles: all which the disjecta membra, “the scattered fragments,” of the Whigs continue to endorse by their perseverance in their adhesion to him, while he declares that he was, and is, and will continue to be, not the candidate of any party, but willing to receive a nomination from all the parties of the country!!! Yes, he would have been glad to have received the nomination of the Buffalo Convention, if it had not laid down the Platform of Freedom, and if he could have accepted it WITHOUT PRINCIPLE! This man evidently wants to be President in order that he may do as he pleases. In a word, are you a Democrat or a Liberty man,⁵ and do the doulocrats taunt you with apostasy from your former particular ground, as well as Martin Van Buren with alleged inconsistency between his past and his present position; ⁶ retort, with entire self-possession, that there has been no conversion of the one party by the other; but that, as old questions have died out, and as there is but one issue now before the country, you all have been compelled, rising superior to vulgar and factious prejudice, by the majesty of a great principle,⁷ to assume your present attitude for the salvation of your country; and that it is broad and commanding enough for every patriot and free man. And with regard to the charge of inconsistency, on the part of the masses who are now swelling the ranks of a renovated and living Democracy, and shouting the paens of anticipated and certain victory; or on the part of their noble and heroic leaders, which is more in appearance than in reality, and is only a bugbear to intimidate children; tell those who would, by such a vague allegations, disturb or change your present course…“The times are changed, and we are changed with them.” The difference of the Questions pending then and now, and the mode of their proposition, explain and reconcile, in the case of every true man, the whole; and render it entirely harmonious. Pursue this course, and every candid man will be your convert.

Having thus demolished all the fortresses, set aside the subterfuges, and brushed away the fig-leaf covering of the wretched cause of the doulocrats, as well as kept your own entrenchments impregnable; you may fortify yourself and your position still father by impartially weighing the two systems of democracy and doulocracy in the balances of Reason, History and the word of God….

Turn again, to the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the United States, and the Ordinance of 1787, by which slavery was forever excluded by the General Government from the North Western Territory;- those glorious charters of our liberties, which are vital and filled with the Genius of Universal Emancipation; - refer your opponents to them as fundamental law, in the premises; and cling to them, as to the Ark and the Palladium of your country’s Republicanism, with the tenacity of death.

Clothed with this panoply, let all out citizens, who have a right to exercise this glorious privilege of freemen, make up their minds, immutably and at once, that they will vote at the coming election: but not for any man who is doubtful upon the Great Question; or who has not explicitly  declared himself uncompromisingly opposed to the extension of slavery, an inch, over territories which are now free of the evil; and in favor of freeing the General Government from all responsibility and merited blame from its existence and its consequences: thus leaving it, while they desire it, or can bear up under the incubus, exclusively within those States which are at present afflicted by the sore calamity.

In the meantime, let light be unsparingly and universally diffused among the people. We have plenty of it. Our case can only be injured by ignorance and prejudice. We have nothing to conceal. Our invitation is to all, “Come and see;” examine for yourselves; form your own independent judgements. All upon whom responsibility rests, ought in their place to discharge the full measure of their duty. The side of the Question which we take, unlike the other, gives inspiration, strength and eloquence.

Let here be magnanimous unions among men of all parties: rising, for their country, superior to the spirit and prejudices of party, for their country, superior to the spirit and prejudices of party, and bursting its decayed bonds, around a great, a holy, a living, an irresistible, and an omnipotent principle. Here all may rally. This is the position of usefulness, of honor, and of success. We confidently expect to find many of its bitterest opponents, among its warmest friends, before and at the election. When such weighty interests are at stake, cast, my countrymen, your petty differences and contentious “to the moles, and to the bats;” and come up, as one man, to the charge against doulocracy. You are, under God, the arbiters of the destiny of the Republic.

Thus equipped and prepared, when the ides of November arrive, proceed to the “polls, which are the battleground,” and fire your “ballots, which are bullets of Republicans,” at the monster of Slave Propagandism, as a power of our Federal Government, which is now set up by Doulocrats for the citizens of all sections of the land to worship; and yours will be a glorious and a bloodless victory.

Thus meeting the Question pressed upon you, by preventing the extension of this evil, vindicating our nation from shame and contempt, and asserting the rights of freedom and her children, commit your cause unto God, and to the Christian world. He will sustain and bless you: his deserved wrath shall be averted, and his rich blessing rest upon our beloved country.

The patriots over all the earth will not only justify you, but clap their hands with joy in view of the result. And be assured, “the sober second thought” of the South herself, will yet honor your motives, and be grateful for the patriotism and the heroism with which you met her OWN ISSUE. You, sir, will here not be found wanting. And this is the place to take a glance at,…

THE CERTAINTY OF SUCCESS, UPON THIS GREAT OCCASION.

And here, my dear sir, it would be pleasant to me, and might be entertaining and instructive to you, were it not that the hour demands diligent, prompt and efficient ACTION, to expatiate upon the certainty of our success as found in the cause of Civil and Religious Liberty itself, which we have the honor to advocate; which has hitherto made its way in defiance of the powers of earth, and the gates of hell, to its universal prevalence in the latter days, ever since Christianity was planted in our fallen world, - God himself being in it, and with it; -and which has stricken down, and will continue to strike down, the most formidable of its opponents- in the great face that truth and righteousness, which are with us in this contest, shall infallibly prevail- in the times and the seasons of the moral world, when the thrones, and the diadems, and the empires of despotism are shaken and removed, and nations are born to liberty as in a day; and all those changes are regulated by a Divine but Invisible Hand, against the dominion of darkness and slavery, and on behalf of the empire of light and of life- in the resistless spirit for right and reform which has simultaneously been awakened on both sides of the ocean; and in its amazing and majestic progress hitherto in our own land- in the evident destiny of America, which is to be “the land of the free, and the home of the brave” - in the hold which everything pertaining to the rights of man, has upon the affections of our people, when fairly presented to their understandings- in the high character of our citizens for their intelligence, virtue and religion; and their indignation at wrong and deception, when they discover attempts, whether covert or open, to practise them either upon themselves or others- in the consternation and disintegration of the old parties- in the seeds of an inevitable and speedy mortality which are sown in the constitution of doulocracy- in the predicted universality of the kingdom of Christ; “the little stone cut out of the mountain without hands.” which, smithing, and making “like the chaff of the summer-threshing floor,” the mountains of despotism, and slavery, and irreligon, “becomes a great mountain, and fills the whole earth”- and in the character and administration of Messiah our King, who, as he is himself most righteous, “will judge the poor of the people, and shall save the children of the needy, and shall break in pieces the oppressor.”

But I must forbear, and leave you to your own reflections upon these matters; asking you only to contemplate with this,

THE RESULTS OF SUCCESS, UPON THIS GREAT OCCASION.

And what created mind can enumerate, or estimate, or describe the blessed results of this, our certain success? The Infinite Intelligence, who presides over the nations, alone can fully comprehend and appreciate them.  Think on these, my worthy and dear friend, in the Light of Philosophy, of Holy Scripture, and of experience, as they shall bear upon those vast territories with their future, teeming millions, upon which the foot of slavery shall never be allowed to plant itself, and where all shall sit under their “own vine and fig-tree,” prosecuting their labors in the useful and the ornamental arts, and reaping the fruits of their free and honest industry- upon the South herself, when the present excitement of her leading politicians has passed away, - for a great portion of the most worthy of her citizens are with us in this movement,- and sober reason shall have resumed her throne; and they shall set themselves to rid slavery from their own borders, and shall find their Northern brethren ready to co-operate with them in every enlightened measure for their deliverance from the evil; and still beyond this, when, being free, their “wildernesses shall rejoice and blossom as the rose” -upon the Free North, in countless direct benefits to herself, and in her complacency and joy in the contemplation of the freedom and the happiness of the whole Republic, through her own firmness in the critical hour, and her well-directed patriotic effects- upon the peace, and unity, and prosperity of our country at large, and the honor and reputation of our government, and of our citizen, both at home and abroad- upon the enemies of liberty throughout the world, to whom this great moral and peaceable revolution will be as the hand-writing on the wall of Belshazzar, or as the roll of Ezekiel, which “was written within and without, with weeping, and lamentations, and mourning, and woe” - upon the oppressed and patriotic opponents of tyranny and oppression in other lands, who shall “lift up their heads with joy, because the day of their own redemption” from political and religious thraldom, “draweth nigh” -upon the church of God in “every nation under heaven;” at home, by removing the most formidable obstacles to her prosperity and her purity, to her peace and her unity; and abroad, by terminating those earnest and truthful remonstrances, with their painful causes, which she has found it necessary to transmit across the Atlantic to the larger departments in this country, against their having any fellowship with the heinous sin of slavery; and by the fine field which it will lay open to her Missionary operations - upon the agricultural and mechanical departments of industry- upon internal and external trade and commerce- upon virtue, science, literature and Religion- upon the interests of all the coming ages of time- and upon the untold and unutterable concerns of eternity. Think on these things: for they are so fraught with the most important realities, that their full elucidation would fill a large volume. And anticipate with me the joyous day, when the swelling and majestic voice of the Atlantic shall be raised to the skies; to which the Pacific in adequate tones shall cordially respond; and the reverberations of their shores shall be taken up by the Alleghenies and the Rocky Mountains, and all the intervening hills and mountains, rivers and lakes: thus filling the continent with loud acclaim, “VAN BUREN AND ADAMS- THE PATRIOTS OF THE NORTH- THE BUFFALO CONVENTION- THE YEAR EIGHTEEN HUNDRED AND FORTY-EIGHT- THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICAN, THE HOME OF FREE SOIL, FREE LABOR, FREE MEN, AND FREE SPEECH- ‘ALLELUIA; FOR THE LORD GOD OMNIPOTENT REIGNETH’ “ - and Liberty in other lands, catching the inspiration of the awakening and exulting shout, shall burst the cerments in which she has been there long enclosed; and give emancipation and enfranchisement to the World. Verily, this is none other than the CAUSE OF GOD AND OF MAN. And, if spared to the day of election, I shall deposite my first vote FOR DEMOCRACY AGAINST DOULOCRACY. In this honor, my respected friend, I feel satisfied that you will be with me an equal sharer; and therefore, I take pleasure in subscribing myself,

Yours, in the Best of Causes,

WILLIAM WILSON.

Cincinnati, September 12, 1848

1. The whole of the Free States are especially under the deepest responsibility. Their population are for liberty. There is not, perhaps, one in a thousand of them who would be willing to vote for a candidate whom he honestly believed to be for the extension of slavery. Hence, the method taken to secure votes for Cass and Taylor is, to assure the people that they are in favor of Free Soil. Nothing else would take. They need not be deceived…. ↩
2. We have all, at some time or other, realized the importance of a single vote. The following instances have fallen under my notice:
   
   One vote in the city of New York returned a republican member to the Assembly, which made a majority in the Legislature of the State for Thomas Jefferson, and gave him the vote of New York, without which he could not have been elected….
   
   One vote elected Marcus Morton Governor of Massachusetts, in an aggregate popular vote of nearly 100,000.
   
   One vote elected William Allen in the Chillicothe district to Congress, in the year 1834, and one vote subsequently made him United States’ Senator, for six years afterwards.
   
   The following case of the kind is still more remarkable: In 1830, Dan Stone, of this city, was a candidate for the State Legislature. Walking up Main street, on the morning of the election, he overtook an acquaintance going to the polls, who intended to vote the opposite ticket. Stone solicited his vote. ‘We are old friends’ said he, ‘and I know you will show a friend the mark of kindness.’ Party spirit was then comparatively quiet. The voter replied ‘Well, Dan, you are a pretty clever fellow, I don’t care if I do.’ That vote elected Stone, and gave a majority of one in the Legislature which made Thos. Ewing United States’s Senator, Mr. Ewing’s vote on the question of confirming the appointment of Martin Van Buren as Minister Plenipotentiary to Great Britain, enabled the Vice President to give the casting vote against it, and recalled Mr. Van Buren home. That recall made Mr. Van Buren first, Vice President, and then, President, and determined the general political policy of the country for four years….
   
   One vote sent James J. Faran to the Legislature, made him subsequently Senator, &c…. ↩
3. I have not been able to lay my hand upon a paper published in the Slaves States, in the interest of Cass or Taylor, which does not, most earnestly, advocate their election to the Presidency, chiefly on the ground that they will support slavery, and which does not represent every other consideration as of minor importance; while their allies among us ask our votes for them on the ground that they are the warm friends of Free Soil! Let the people take care of themselves. ↩
4. If the panic produced by the first roar of the Northern Lion, when roused from his lair, and the effect upon the security of freedom for our territories, were so great, what may be expected when he shall range in majesty, and utter his voice, at least throughout the whole of the Free States? “Coming events cast their shadows before.” ↩
5. The Author has never had any connection with the late Liberty party. ↩
6. There is, methinks, a wide difference between a President of the United States being willing to veto any bill which might seem to encourage a threatened and feared servile insurrection in the ancient home of slavery, and which would not touch the root of the evil; and his vetoing a bill for the extension of that leprosy to the territories which are now free of it, contrary to the whole theory and practice of the General Government, and passed upon the ground that the propagation of slavery is one of its legitimate powers. And the fact that President Van Buren was willing to do the former, in the circumstances which existed in 1837, but now declares that, if again elected, he will not do the latter, involves no manner of inconsistency whatsoever! The principle of both may be the same- love of country, and of her peace and prosperity. ↩
7. So far from being dishonorable or ridiculous, the union of men of all parties for the good of their country, which has begun, and is still in rapid progress, partakes largely of the moral sublime, and is one of the most cheering prognostications of the coming golden age of our world. Men are to unite as the latter-day glory approaches, and in order to its acceleration. “The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid, and the calf, and the young lion, and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them.” &c. ISAIAH ↩