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Franklin Repository: 10 30, 1867 Go To Page : 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 |

Reflections on our Defeat
(Column 1)

Summary: Seeking an answer to explain the Republicans' poor showing in the last election, the editors blame the evil lurking within man. These sentiments, they avow, can be found in the Democrats' policies.

Full Text of Article:

Whatever of evil exists in the world is, ordinarily, and doubtless with truth, attributed to the Devil. His agency in promoting secession and his purpose, the bolstering for an indefinite series of years of a favorite institution, slavery, are facts firmly held by every loyal mind. The utter failure of the movement in behalf of wrong is regarded, accordingly, as a triumph over diabolical interference. We are taught, however, that the arch enemy is pertinacious and industrious, and we may well believe that the bitterness of disappointment is but an incentive to fresh attempts upon the integrity of our hated race. As he plied Job with argument and vexed him with sophistry, by the mouths of his own familiars, after calamity and grief had but illustrated the constancy of the man, it would not be unprecedented, were resort, now, discoverably, to be had to the same expedients since the circumstances are so strikingly the same. For, as with Job, under the pressure of the greatest calamities endured by any people wide spread bereavement and universal loss--the national conscience grew the more steadily in strength to the acknowledgement of national wrong and the general resolve became but the firmer to do right in pursuance of belief. The strain of vehement trial rooted conviction more deeply; delays quickened impatience, disappointment incited to fresh efforts difficulty inspired zeal; emulation prompted sacrifice and fervor opened martyrdom as the gateway to success. Out of the war came a people, chastened, purified, enlightened, ennobled, and cheered because triumphant.

But the embers of a triumph often light the watch fires of the foe. Evil is deathless and survives defeat. Men are not made to act the hero's part through life's whole round, nor people to sustain the constant stress of the sublime. However it may be, and is, where great interests are at stake, rousing strong passions and making the otherwise impracticable possible, even certain; it is, experience shows, quite as probable as it is natural, that indifference will follow with the inevitable reaction of exhaustion. In such a slough are we mired today. The elections point this moral. The devices of the adversary show that he knows it. Prejudice and ignobler passions are never so alive as when their masters, enlightenment and the virtues, are wearied and sluggishly content with their work. The six years of this decade have been glorious ones for our people. A huge sin desisted from; the sole cause of distraction removed from the land; a narrow, jealous, false, theory of government exploded; the true and its accordant policy established; it is not wonderful, though unfortunate, that they, who have wrought all this should grow inert, because complacent. Hence the disasters of yesterday.

Steadfastness is the price of supremacy. They who fought and won so often, so long, must gird themselves for other battles. The field it's true is changed, the tactics of the enemy altered. Troops of Sabeans and Chaldeans no longer slay our young men with the sword, nor carry away our camels, in the hope of deferring our manhood from a further persistence in uprightness and of shaking our faith in truth, but Satanic industry was never busier in pouring into our eats by familiar voices, the juggleries of sophistry and untruth.

Whence come the suggestions, that after the bloodiest civil war of history, causeless save for the deliberate resolve to uphold the most stupendous of all crimes--a war the authors of which are guilty of every sin enumerated in the decalogue, a thousand times committed, all unrepented of and unatoned for--that these murderers, robbers, burglars, thieves should be reinvested with the rights of citizenship, without punishment and without bail, that enormity of offence ought to insure impunity to the offender and, that the injured are the gainers by forbearance; that a people staggering under a load of debt can best relieve themselves by dishonesty, by repudiation; and that the ignorance which our own injustice enforced upon a captive race is the best reason for perpetuating their inferiority and our own wrong? If they do not spring direct from the author of all evil they belie their looks.

The whisperers of these suggestions reckon on the weaknesses of humanity and their recent successes testify to their shrewdness. Will we consent to an unqualified restoration of criminals; will we sully our integrity by breaking our plighted faith with them who fought for us and who sustained us by their substance; will we sink our liberated Helots into a new serfdom; will we not rather so guard our peace that malcontents, hereafter, will seek other climes as a refuge for their griefs, and, supplying their places with the zealous and true of any race or color, make good our claim to the name of an invincible because an upright and a truthful people? These questions must be answered when next we gather to the ballot box.

[No Title]
(Column 1)

Summary: It is reported that voters in Virginia have come out in favor of a Constitutional Convention, which, when it meets, will "contain a radical majority." "Virginia," the piece notes, "will be restored, not as an oligarchy, but as a model Republican State, based upon pure democratic principles."

Full Text of Article:

VIRGINIA has decided in favor of a constitutional convention by a majority of perhaps twenty thousand. She thus expresses her acceptance of the terms offered her by Congress, and earnestly enters upon the work of restoration. Her convention will contain a radical majority of twenty at least, and the speedy consummation of the work is thus assured. The result gloriously vindicates the wisdom and justice of the Congressional plan of reconstruction. Virginia will be restored, not as an oligarchy, but as a model Republican State, based upon pure democratic principles. Henceforth her government will be directed and controlled not by any particular class but by her people. She presented a spectacle at her last election that should confound the enemies of popular government, and an example that other States may profit by studying. Without distinction of race or color her people all participated, with a regard for law and order that would have been remarkable in her former history. She has rebuked those who predicted a war of races no less emphatically than those who have all along asserted that the negro population of the South was not qualified to exercise the great franchises of American freemen. The result proves what any impartial mind would have accepted without actual demonstration, that hostility between the races if it comes at all, must come through the oppression of one, rather than from the enjoyment of equal rights by both. It further proves a stern devotion to principles by Blacks upon which we can build in perfect safety.

We rejoice in the triumph because it assures us of the speedy consummation of the great work of reconstruction, and indicates an early and happy pacification of our country.

[No Title]
(Column 2)

Summary: The editors commend the legislature's decision to appoint a commission to investigate problems in the state's tax system. Reforms, they say, are long overdue.

[No Title]
(Column 2)

Summary: Informs readers that they have until March 2nd to obtain relief as promised under the Bankruptcy Act.

[No Title]
(Column 2)

Summary: Announces that Chief Justice Chase handed down his opinion on Maryland's apprentice system--which guarantees an education to white apprentices, but not to black apprentices--ruling them unconstitutional. His decision, the piece relates, Chase has "affirmed the constitutionality of the Civil Rights bill, and decided that 'colored person, equally with whites, are citizens of the United States.'"

[No Title]
(Column 1)

Summary: Reports that a ship believed to be carrying persons infected with a disease resembling cholera docked in Philadelphia recently, causing "considerable excitement" among the city's residents.

Luv Spats
(Column 3)

Summary: In his latest diatribe, Obidiah discusses his views on marriage and relations between men and women.

Trailer: Obidiah Snodgrass

The Pacific Railroad
(Column 5)

Summary: The article chronicles the construction of the railroad route to the West, the dreamy landscapes that dot the plain, and examines the danger posed by Indians.

Origin of Article: New York Tribune

Address of the Union Republican State Central Committee
(Column 7)

Summary: The article contains a copy of the address delivered by F. Jordan, Chairman of the Republican State Party, before the State Central Committee. The chief topic of the speech was the party's poor showing in the election results.

Impeachment
(Column 7)

Summary: The article lays out an argument in favor of impeaching President Johnson, contending that those who oppose the process do not comprehend its function. It is primarily "a remedy against official misconduct," a crime Johnson has clearly committed.

Origin of Article: The Morning Post

Editorial Comment: "The following article on impeachment we copy from the new penny paper of Philadelphia The Morning Post--one of the spiciest dailies on our list. We do not anticipate that President Johnson will be impeached, but we publish the article that our readers may learn how the subject is treated:"

Decay in the Oil Regions
(Column 8)

Summary: Reports that the fortunes of Pennsylvania's oil region, formerly the darling of eastern investors, have fallen considerably in the past three years. Where there was once a thriving industry, all that remains is "a long line of rotting derricks, and rusted boilers and engines."

Full Text of Article:

A recent visitor in the oil regions of Pennsylvania describes the desolation which reigns in a once famous locality. Between Oil City and Meadville, not one well is in operation. It is only a long line of rotting derricks, and rusted boilers and engines. At Franklin, where the French creek empties into the Allegheny, they show with pride the great court house that they are building, the tall marble monument to the martyrs of the war, and the tumbling down farm-house of the Evans family. Three years ago, $100,000 were offered to this family for their house and ground. The offer was refused as too moderate; and the daughter of the house, in the flush of sudden wealth, scorned her rustic lover, and cancelled her engagement. Now the estate house, farm and all, will not bring $1,000, the daughter in single blessedness, and the family can only remember in their present misery, their former hope.

Local Items--Dwelling and Broom Factory Burned
(Column 1)

Summary: Reports that a fire destroyed Jackson Eyler's home and broom shop yesterday. The blaze originated in a bleach box in the factory, and when discovered had gained such headway as to frustrate all efforts to extinguish it." The extent of Eyler's losses are unknown at this time.
(Names in announcement: Jackson Eyler)

Local Items--Distressing Accident
(Column 2)

Summary: John Zimmerman lost two fingers in an accident that occurred when the corn sheller he was operating became choked, requiring him to place his hand in the machine to clear the blockage. Zimmerman's hand got stuck in the machinery in the process. It is feared that the entire hand may need to be amputated.
(Names in announcement: John Zimmerman)

Local Items--An Accident
(Column 1)

Summary: Leonard Divilbliss suffered serious injuries last Tuesday when his wagon "passed over his leg between the knee and thigh, crushing it in a horrible manner, and it is feared rendering amputation necessary." Divilbliss was hauling wood at the time of the accident.
(Names in announcement: Leonard Divilbliss)

Origin of Article: Mercersburg Journal

Local Items--Quick Work
(Column 1)

Summary: Relates that H. C. Keyser, local real estate agent, sold a 96 acre farm for $10,000 within five days of placing it on the market.
(Names in announcement: H. C. Keyser)

Local Items--Hallow E'en
(Column 2)

Summary: The editors note the impending arrival of Halloween and remonstrate against the actions of local youth, who have taken to "the indiscriminate pounding of doors, tearing of porches from their fastenings in front of dwellings, pulling door bells, throwing corn at windows, pulling all sorts of moveables into the streets, and other species of mischief."

Local Items--Accident to Prof. Light
(Column 2)

Summary: Informs readers that John A. Light's balloon ascension in Juniata county on October 17th came to a "perilous termination" after "his balloon split from the loop to the top and descended with alarming rapidity." Despite the scare, Light landed in the Juniata River, escaping serious harm.
(Names in announcement: John A. Light)

Local Items--Temperance Convention
(Column 2)

Summary: Announces that the next quarterly meeting of the Cumberland Valley Good Templar's Association will be held in Greencastle on November 13th.

Local Items--Personal
(Column 2)

Summary: Notes that Jacob Heyser was elected to the Board of Trustees of the Mercersburg Theological Seminary.
(Names in announcement: Jacob Heyser)

Local Items--Candidate for Clerk
(Column 2)

Summary: According to the Harrisburg Telegraph, Col. F. S. Stumbaugh, former representative to the Legislature from Franklin, is a candidate for Clerk in the House of Representatives.
(Names in announcement: Col. F. S. Stumbaugh)

Local Items--Called
(Column 2)

Summary: Announces that Rev. Baum, of York county, will take charge of the First Lutheran Congregation of Chambersburg.
(Names in announcement: Rev. Baum)

Married
(Column 3)

Summary: On August 20th, Jacob Banker and Mary Kuhn were married by Rev. P. S. Davis.
(Names in announcement: Jacob Banker, Mary Kuhn, Rev. P. S. Davis)

Married
(Column 3)

Summary: On Oct. 23rd, George William Miller and Laura Virginian Banks were married by Rev. B. S. Schneck.
(Names in announcement: George William Miller, Laura Virginian Banks, Rev. B. S. Schneck)

Married
(Column 3)

Summary: On June 12th, Harry J. Renfrew and Lottie E. Greenawalt were married by Rev. A. R. Buhrman.
(Names in announcement: Harry J. Renfrew, Lottie E. Greenawalt, Rev. A. R. Bohrman)

Married
(Column 3)

Summary: On Oct. 29th, John Eby and Martha Dehaven were married by Rev. James M. Bishop.
(Names in announcement: John Eby, Martha Dehaven, Rev. James M. Bishop)

Died
(Column 3)

Summary: On Oct. 2nd, J. McDowell died near Loudon. He was 80 years old.
(Names in announcement: J. McDowell)