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Franklin Repository: July 29, 1868 Go To Page : 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 |

[No Title]
(Column 01)

Summary: The paper urges Republicans to take united action in the coming campaign. The editors blame previous defeats upon low turnout and low enthusiasm, and wish to prevent a similar result.

Full Text of Article:

To the Republicans of Franklin county, we say don't neglect to attend the delegate meetings on Saturday next. A year ago the county was lost to us, not for lack of loyal voters, but because the Democracy were united and on the alert, while we were dissatisfied and divided. Seven hundred Republican voters remained away from the polls on the day of election, while but two hundred of the Democracy failed to respond.

It is in our power, as well as it is our bounden duty, to wipe out this stigma of defeat. We can do it by beginning right and in earnest, just where we began wrong and foolishly then.

There is important work to be performed on Saturdap next. A failure to elect our ticket in the coming election will put the power of the county in the hands of the Democracy. Let loyal men not forget this fact when the time to elect delegates arrives. The delegates sent to the Convention to make our county ticket, and to assist in the formation of Legislative, Senatorial, Judicial and Congressional tickets, should be elected by a majority of the Republican voters of their respective wards and townships, and should come here prepared to represent understandingly the wishes of those who sent them, on every question that will legitimately come before that body. If this be done, we will have started right in the campaign, and will nominate a ticket that will enlist the earnest and united labor of the whole party to secure its election.

Do not forget that no one has a right to demand of the people a nomination for any office at their disposal, wither for preeminent services or personal fitness. They are themselves the best judges of both, and should never surrender their inalienable right to select their own servants. Among the duties of the delegates when they met in Convention, will be to determine either for or against the Crawford county System of nominating candidates. The county committee has so instructed, and it would be well if this question were finally settled for the future, especially as our present system is regarded by many as imperfect. The verdict of a county convention for either the one or the other will give the force of authority for whichever method it approves.

The Democratic Party and Repudiation
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Summary: The paper denounces Democratic proposals for repudiation of the national debt. The editors charge that the Democratic Party has fallen away from its original principles that championed the rights of the common man.

Full Text of Article:

The man who will write the history of the past few years, will doubtless express his wonder at the fatuity of the Democratic party. Founded by men who were both wise and good, and intended to subserve the interests of the many as opposed to the few, it started upon its career when the course seemed unobstructed and every augury auspicious. The expansion of our domain, however, soon gave rise to questions of policy connected with the territory newly acquired. The slaveholders, with the insolence that has always characterized oppressors, demanded one policy, whilst the friends of humanity and civilization demanded another. At this point the Democratic party made that notable departure from the purposes of its founders, and allied itself to the interests of a class, whilst their opponents, standing upon the immutable rock of the equal rights of all God's creatures, bid defiance and calmly awaited the outset. It came; the shock was soon over; and all around was seen lying the wreck of the consolidated forces of an insolent despotism and a temporizing political organization.

Not content with their signal chastisement at the polls, the forces of despotism at the South invited the nation to war. There was no alternative but to accept the wager tendered. To refuse it was to die. The history of the conflict is too recent to require rehearsing, and it were well for the Democratic party could its utterances and its actions be expunged from the record of the times. The men of the present will not fail to remember, and the men of the future will have the opportunity to read, how it clamored for compromise when the nation was being spit upon; how it pronounced the war a failure when our armies were reaching forth to grasp dearly earned victories, and how it discouraged enlistments and refused supplies in the very agony of the strife. But in this, as in most of its course since it allied itself to the cause of oppression, it was consistent. It could not consort with and love the nation's enemies without hating the nation itself.

Beaten in a great political contest, vanquished in an appeal to arms, it might have been expected that the Northern half of this unnatural alliance would seek to dissever itself from the dead body to which it had been united, but instead it bewails its foster child now no more and strikes about with the wild malignity of deep disappointment. Practically it insists that there has been no war. It would cover our Southern countrymen, before their fierce anger has abated, with the mantle of national forgiveness, and exact no guarantees in the interest of freedom, so as to prevent a recurrence of the fearful strife through which it was established. It would make it possible to pay the debt incurred in warring upon the nation, whilst it would throw every obstacle in the way of the honest fulfillment of the national monetary obligations.

The questions of finance and reconstruction are all that enter into the campaign of the present year. Indeed, in view of the fact that reconstruction under the Congressional plan, is now an accomplished fact over almost the whole South, unless the Democrats design if successful to tear up the fabric of government established against their bitterest opposition, and plunge the country again into anarchy and strife, the financial question is the main one entering into the canvass of 1868.

The position of the Democrats is that where the obligations of the Government do not expressly state upon their face, or the law under which they were issued does not provide, that they shall be paid in coin, they ought, in right and justice, be paid in the lawful money of the United States. Such are the words of their platform. This is the scheme of repudiation to which the country is invited. It had its origin in the brain of George H. Pendleton, of Ohio, who had the Presidency in his eye at the time he published his views. He foresaw that with the unpatriotic, the unscrupulous, the unthinking and the debased, it would make a popalar rallying cry, and trusted that upon it he could become the nominee of his party and afterwards the chief executive officer of the nation. But Pendleton is not the first man who has made a miscalculation, and his failure to reach his primary object is an earnest that his party will meet with no better success.

That the Government have a contract with the creditors who hold its bonds to pay them in the common, usual currency of the nation, which is gold and silver, is almost too plain for argument. Since it has been a Government it has paid its loans in nothing else, and even in the fall of 1862 when the loan of 1842 amounting to $3,000,000 fell due, and after legal tender had been issued, it was paid religiously notwithstanding the necessities of the government were then great. Nothing was said in that loan about coin payment, and an opportunity was offered to test the theory of payment in paper. Pendleton sat in Congress then as he had the previous February and offered no word of objection. He listened to the discussion upon the bill providing for the first five-twenties, and although it was replete with declarations that the bonds about to be issued were payable principal and interest in coin and none seemed to take the opposite view he remained silent.

The five-twenties were put upon the market. The agent of the government announced that they were payable as has been stated. The language of the law not expressly stating that they were payable in coin (and this peculiarity is found in all previous laws relating to loans), Secretary Chase was applied to for information and officially announced that they were payable in coin, that such was the spirit and meaning of the law, and that such had always been the practice of the department. Early in 1863 the ten-forties were created by an act of Congress, and in this law it was expressly provided that principal and interest were payable in coin. This was inserted, doubtless, to guard against any possible attempt at repudiation. At this time but about $25,000,000 of the $500,000,000 of five twenties authorized by the act of February 25, 1862, had been issued. It was after the ten-forties, made absolutely payable in gold, had been created, that the people came forward and took up the whole remainder of five-twenties which the repudiationists would now have us to believe were to be payable in paper.

The Democratic party heard and saw all this. They saw the people, poor and rich, low and high, come forward and put their money in this great fund for the saving of the nation. They saw money flowing into our coffers from the great European nations and our bonds sent in return. They saw our national banks, insurance, savings and trust companies, and numberless private trustees, invest their money similarly, and they uttered no warning cry.

Since that time Mr. Fessenden, as the chief officer of the Treasury, has spoken, as also Mr. M'Cullough, who succeeded him. Both concur with Mr. Chase. In the summer of 1864, Congress refused to incorporate the words "payable in coin" into the bill creating the seven-thirties and additional five-twenties, for the reason, as appears from the official record of the debate on that occasion, that if the unnecessary practice were continued of providing each loan bill, that the bonds to be issued were payable in gold, an unjust discrimination might be made against the five-twenties of 1862.

The existence of our greenbacks is probably to be deplored, and it would be better for every interest that we should resume the payment of specie as soon as we can safely do so. Their issue, however, was a necessity, and in the nature of an enforced loan. They must at some day be redeemed if we ever expect to resume specie payment, or be made of equal value with specie. Notwithstanding their peculiar hard money theories in years gone by, the Democrats now propose that the government set its printing presses to work and issue immediately five hundred millions of paper money to pay the five hundred millions of five-twenties due now--at the option of the government, and again in 1872 print eleven hundred millions additional of paper currency, to pay the bonds then maturing. In other words, it is proposed to pay the national creditors, whether foreign or domestic, rich or poor, in promises to pay.

The distress and ruin that an inflation so enormous as this must occasion will be terrible. Not only the wealthy classes and the holders of bonds will suffer, but the humble poor man who had nothing but his prayers to give his country and who is satisfied so that by his toil he may subsist, will be deprived of all that makes his life tolerable. The Democratic party do not, can not mean it. It is an electioneering cry. They will practice no such cruelty. They will assign us no such portion among nations. They will not bring down upon us the wrath of heaven by rascality so henious and unconscionable.

[No Title]
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Summary: The paper refutes Democratic claims that Horatio Seymour, while governor of New York, lent Pennsylvania critical aid during the Gettysburg campaign.

Full Text of Article:

Mr. WALLACE, Chairman of the Democratic State Committee, in his address to the Democracy says that "Pennsylvania owes Horatio Seymour a debt of gratitude for his prompt aid, when her border was attacked."

This, if not contradicted by those whose unfortunate experience enables them to know, would reasonably make Pennsylvanians feel kindly toward Governor Seymour. The citizens of Chambersburg, and indeed of the whole county of Franklin, have, however, not forgotten the great rebellion, nor the loss of life and property incident to it. Three times they were overrun and plundered, their fields laid waste, their stocks and goods stolen and burned by the rebels, and only once by the New York Militia. Yet but for the last visit of the rebels, when they left our town in ashes, we fared quite as well if not better at their hands than at the hands of Governor Seymour's New York bummers. If the two regiments sent to Chambersburg were not a raiding party of Seymour's New York City friends, who held that city for three days in 1863, they acted so much like them as to deceive every one here into that belief. The rights of citizenship and private property were perhaps as much respected by them as by the rebels themselves, certainly not more and as for defending the border from the enemy, it was farthest from their thoughts. The regiments sent here arrived on Sunday, at a time when rumors were thick that the rebel army was crossing at Williamsport. After being bountifully fed by the citizens, they spent the rest of the day in disorderly and riotous conduct through the town, and at evening marched two miles South to watch the enemy. Though the enemy did not reach Chambersburg until days afterwards, the patriotic New Yorkers skedaddled during the night, leaving their camp equipage, supplies and all, seized the cars at the depot, and the next morning formed their line at Carlisle, with their faces toward New York.

Our citizens gathered up their tents and baggage and returned them, with gratitude it is true, not for their aid, but that they had not remained with us longer.

In November Franklin county will cancel the debt of gratitude she owes to the Democratic and Secession candidate for President, "for prompt aid rendered when her border was attacked."

[No Title]
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Summary: The paper referees the ongoing debate between "Franklin" and "Republican." The editors chastise "Franklin" for attacking Col. Wiestling's military record by asserting it consisted only in organizing drafted men. "The military service of Col. Wiestling is no better or worse because the regiment he commanded in the field was a drafted one. It was composed of first-rate men, many of them from our own county, who would have done their duty any where, and who were proud of their commanding officer.

The Congressional Nomination
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Summary: "Mercer" writes in favor of Mr. Cessna's nomination as Republican congressman from Franklin. He urges those who support Wiestling and Koontz to end the factionalism within the party.

District Attorney
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Summary: "Waynesboro" writes to endorse S. W. Hays as Republican candidate for District Attorney.

The Legislature
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Summary: "Veteran" writes to urge the re-nomination of Col. Theodore McGowan of Fayetteville as Republican candidate for the legislature. He cites his reputation as a devoted Republican and "a gallant soldier and worthy citizen."

The Legislature
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Summary: "Green" writes to suggest Lyman S. Clarke, a devoted Republican, as candidate for the legislature. He is a town favorite.

The Ryder Nursery Association
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Summary: The paper describes the activities of B. L. Ryder's "Ryder Nursery Association." The company hopes to become a premier commercial nursery. It has purchased the West Franklin Farm for $35,000, and owns a nursery, orchard, steam engine, canning facilities, and a seed and supplies depot. Stock is being sold in the company. Thomas J. Grimason acts as soliciting agent, H. M. Engle holds the office of president, and William G. Reed is the treasurer.
(Names in announcement: B. L. Ryder, Thomas J. Grimason, H. M. Engle, William G. Reed)

Dedication of the Presbyterian Church in Waynesboro
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Summary: The new Presbyterian Church in Waynesboro was opened to the public on July 19th. The Rev. J. Wightman preached. The pastor thanks Miss Lou Douglass for efforts in raising funds, and the building committee that included Smith Amberson, J. H. Clayton, and Fullerton Gordon. The paper includes a description of the beautiful building.
(Names in announcement: Rev. J. Wightman, Lou Douglass, Smith Amberson, J. H. Clayton, Fullerton Gordon)

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Summary: The paper reports that William Jones, African American porter at the National Hotel, died on July 23rd. He was buried in the African American cemetery. "His remains were followed to their resting place by a large assembly of persons, both white and black, whose presence was an expression of the genuine respect and esteem in which he was held. If one desires to be remembered for faithfulness and honesty in the sphere wherein Providence has placed him, Billy Jones, though humble and lowly in life, earned a warrant to be kindly remembered by those whom he served, which is clear and undisputed. During a period of ten years he was in the employ of Mr. Trostle, of the National Hotel, whose unlimited confidence he had secured by his honesty and attention to duty. He was kind and obliging to all, but possessed of real independence and manhood, and lived the life of a good citizen, and we are informed a sincere christian."
(Names in announcement: William Jones, Trostle)

Married
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Summary: William E. Gillan and Miss Ephia Keefer, both from near St. Thomas, were married in Chambersburg on July 21st by the Rev. P. S. Davis.
(Names in announcement: William E. Gillan, Ephia Keefer, Rev. P. S. Davis)

Died
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Summary: Miss Lydia Etter died in Chambersburg on July 20th. She was 74 years old.
(Names in announcement: Lydia Etter)

Died
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Summary: William Jones, African American, died at the National Hotel in Chambersburg on July 23rd of cholera morbus. He was 65 years old.
(Names in announcement: William Jones)

Died
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Summary: Bruce Emerson Stoner, only child of Henry X. and Nettie C. Stoner, died in Waynesboro on June 28th.
(Names in announcement: Bruce Emerson Stoner, Henry X. Stoner, Nettie C. Stoner)

Died
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Summary: Harvey Dowd Spidel, infant son of A. G. Spidel, died in Alto Dale, Franklin County, on July 16th. He was 3 months old.
(Names in announcement: Harvey Dowd Spidel, A. G. Spidel)

Died
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Summary: Mary Lizzie Cort, daughter of Rev. P. Cort, died in Alto Dale of cholera infantum on July 22nd. She was 1 year old.
(Names in announcement: Mary Lizzie Cort, Rev. P. Cort)

Died
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Summary: Ida Mary Myers, daughter of John and Emaline Myers, died on July 21st. She was 10 months old.
(Names in announcement: Ida Mary Myers, John Myers, Emaline Myers)