|
|
Franklin Repository: November 04, 1868Go To Page : 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | |
-Page 01- |
-Page 02- |
The Contest is Ended
(Column 01)Summary: The editor expresses relief that the presidential contest is over. He admitted that wrongdoing was done by both sides but still insisted most of the immoral acts were done by the Democrats. No matter what the outcome, he calls on both parties to fully support whoever wins the election as long as that candidate supported loyal men and denounced traitors.
Full Text of Article:Out of the Depths We Cry Unto YouTo-day the struggle for the Presidency is over; the great political battle of 1868 is ended. The people have made it a leaf in history, and we doubt not all persons rejoice that the reign of passion and prejudice has expired, and that their power for evil is removed. Their baneful fruits may and will reach into the future, for political hopes and hates do not die in a moment, but the fuel which fed their flames has been cut off with the close of the contest, and the vanquished will yield the victory to those who have won it.
The contest, for it was more than a controversy, was momentous in its import. Perhaps never have the people battled through a National contest with such a keen sense of its awful importance, with such mingled emotions of hope and fear, as did they through the one just closed. This was apparent in every stage of its progress. There was none of the volatile effervescent enthusiasm which marked Presidential campaigns before the war. It meant business, the gravest business to which a people who own their government can betake themselves. Both parties were marked by a stern, unrelenting determination to do something too deep, too serious to bubble over in jubilees and frolicks. It was a conflict of ideas which, though old as the world, have never ceased to strive for the mastery. It began in the cradle of the earth and accompanied man in all his steps through the misty past, from the Garden of Eden down to to-day, when we find him battling for the Right on the American Continent. The essence of this warfare never changes, though the weapons often do. It exists in the nature of things that truth and error, right and wrong, liberty or freedom to do right and license or freedom to do wrong, can never compromise. They can never lay down their arms and live side by side. They are antagonistic and one or the other must prevail. It is the history of a life. It is the history of society. It is the history of the race written in ineffaceable characters of blood.
Our Presidential campaign was but one of the phases of this eternal conflict of ideas. Hence its gravity. The supremacy of conflicting ideas was striven for, hence there was no glorifying any man. Men were used but as the exponents of these principles and save as they represented these they were nothing. No man living is so eminently entitled to all the honor Americans have to bestow as General Grant. His services to his country wholly obscured those of General Harrison or Henry Clay. Yet the campaign of 1840 was a national ovation to the man who had made successful warfare against the Indians, and in 1844 thousands of strong men wept at the defeat of gallant Harry of the West." They were the people's idols. But the people had no time or taste to crown their hero's brow now. Men sank into insignificance and man worship had no place in the colossal issues of this conflict. The supporters of Gen. Grant fought for a nation's life and as a trusty and tried leader in a similar conflict, but with different weapons, they chose him as their leader again. We doubt not a similar process of reasoning, but from very different premises, led the Democratic party to Horatio Seymour as the true representative of the principles which they hoped through him to see triumph.
We write this without any knowledge as to the result of the contest, but we rejoice that it is over. Some things engendered by its heat and bitterness, and not wholly on one side or the other, were well forgotten. Long political excitement obscures the moral perceptions.--Men forget the holy relations of the citizen to law and order, and are led step by step first to the approval of crime in others and then to the commission of it themselves. As bad men are found in the ranks of both political parties this is true of both. But while true of individuals in both, on the side of the Democratic party there was an organized disregard of law, a willingness to override law that it might secure the reins of the Government. It began with the initial step of that party in the campaign in the nomination of candidates who had declared themselves in favor of snatching from the loyal people the dearly bought fruits of the war, and the yielding up of the control of the party into the hands of unrepentant rebels, and the voluntary declaration that through its success they should secure all that they had hoped to win by the rebellion. Thereby treason was made honorable, and those who had been forgetful alike of patriotism, honor and country, had striven to rend and destroy their Nationality, were encouraged in their treason and directed to look towards the Democracy for its approval. From that moment the floodgate of their evil passions was opened afresh, and the worst days of the dark ages were visited upon the unprotected heads of Southern loyalists. Murder stalked through the land in the broad light of day, and the lives of thousands were sacrificed to the diabolical passions of these men encouraged by the Democratic party. Devotion to country alone was the test by which these victims were tried. Guilty of this and none were too lowly to escape them or too high in position to find protection. The blood of the white man and of the negro, of the proud and the despised race, was shed like water by this spirit of lawlessness and rebellion invoked by the Democracy. These things were known to all men who did not wilfully close their understandings during the campaign, but they were never denounced by Democratic journals. The management of the party was in the hands of traitors, and whether men approved them or not, their tongues were tied or if they wagged at all, it was to deny or to explain them away. We hope yesterday's setting sun closed upon these scenes forever, and that, with the dawn of today begins an endless era of peace and protection.
We believe that the people will honor themselves and prove their fitness for the sacred duty of freemen by electing Gen. Grant, and hope to be able to so announce it in this paper. But it is possible that we may be deceived, and that the destiny of the country may be placed in the hands of Horatio Seymour. If so, we would have all men, whatever their political belief, prepare to yield a willing obedience to the laws, to cast off the soiled garments of passion and bitterness and leave them behind on the field of strife, and make common cause for the preservation of the government.
As its constitutional head, we should sustain Seymour in all things looking to the safety and permanence of our institutions. Judging from the past, we should differ form him in many of his measures and counsel against much of his policy; but looking always to the careful observance of the law in its spirit as our safety in person, property and liberty, we would labor to strengthen rather than weaken his power so long as he strove to maintain the unity of the government and root out treason from the land.
The same is equally the duty of our opponents if Gen. Grant becomes our Chief Magistrate in conformity with the laws. Let them not forget that bitter hostility to his election and extreme opposition to the policy of the party which placed him in power, can justify no open or covert measures to defeat the government in its efforts to restore a united and happy people.
(Column 02)Summary: The paper gloats that voters still voted for Republicans despite all the panicked warnings sent out by the Valley Spirit, the local Democratic newspaper. The latter tried to scare voters with visions of "negro superiority", which the editor finds ridiculous. He also defends the Republicans' reconstruction plans.
Full Text of Article:Official Vote for Additional Law JudgeWe condole with the Spirit. From the deep valley of humiliation and despair comes a voice of wailing. It is the voice of the Spirit. It feels badly and refuses to be comforted. The Spirit cried out to the people, it said, in a voice of warning, but the obstinate people thought it a voice of mockery and fled from it. It appealed to them but they refused to hear, and gave it only disappointment for its appeals. Verily it is a journal of sorrow and acquainted with grief. It piped and they refused to dance; it wept and they mourned not; it gave them here a little and there a little, but not of truth, but the ignorant people turned a deaf ear to the sapient Spirit and voted just as it didn't want them to vote.
O you foolish people, and slow to believe. You have eyes, but the Spirit's loveliness you see not; you have ears, but the Spirit's counsel you hear not; you have understandings, but the force of the Spirit's arguments you perceive not; you have ballots, but the Spirit's ticket you vote not. Therefore is the Spirit sad. When human beings become very sick and disgusted with life they wish to die. Why cannot this animal, so full of grief, its feelings so plowed and harrowed with despair at the awful images of the future which dwell in its imagination, give up the ghost and be at rest? Beside, this would be an apposite moment to shuffle off, we almost said its coil, when thousands of mourners weep around the lifeless remains of Copperheadism. It could almost flatter itself into the belief that some of this weeping and wailing was at its own taking off. It might even derive some consolation from its own obsequies. But no. It won't die. With its brains and its bottom knocked clean out of it by the October elections, it confirms the truth of the tenacity of life peculiar to its race. It still retains its wind, and so long as this lasts its monotonous, croning cry will be heard, and the burdent of that cry is the "nigger." Like water to a mad dog, the "nigger" always throws the Spirit into a spasm. The one is just as harmless as the other, and the effect of the one just as unaccountable as the effect of the other.
The Spirit asks, "Do the Republicans of Pennsylvania think that because the negro does not vote in this State he does not stand upon terms of equality with them?" If the Spirit would do more listening and less howling we would say we rather think they do. If the Spirit says the negroes do stand on an equality with them, we suppose as a fair and candid Spirit it would not object to exchanging its rights in Pennsylvania with some intelligent negro, especially as by its own position it could not be damaged thereby. The proof of the pudding, &c., you know. If the Spirit means social equality why then of course we could not ask it to make the exchange without first consulting the negro.
Before beginning the next sentence the Spirit must have taken a nip of hasheesh, which is said to intensify the imagination, for its says:
"True, he does not elbow them at their voting places. He does not spread his perfume around their polls. His ivories no not shine like a polished steel trap through the window where their ballots are taken in . But in those places where the destinies of the nation are decided he meets them on terms of equality and speaks in a voice as potential as theirs.
"There will be Senators in the United States Senate on the fourth of march next, who were elected by the negro members of the Legislature of Southern States. There will be members of the House who were elected by the direct votes of negroes at the ballot box. Each Senator thus elected by negroes in the Legislature, and each member thus elected by negroes at the polls, will have a voice and a vote equal to each Senator and each member elected by the white people of Pennsylvania.
"To this position of political equality with the intelligent white men of the North have the ignorant negroes of the South boen elevated by the reconstruction policy of the Radicals. Every Northern man who votes for Grant votes to weigh a Southern negro in the scale against himself.--And what is worse, he gives the negro a chance to out-weigh him."
"Many Republicans look upon this elevation of the Southern negroes merely as a deserved degradation of the Rebels. They overlook the fact that it is also degradation of the white people of the North. We confess our fear that they will continue to look at it in a wrong light, and only awake to a true view of it when they find Negro Equality fastenned upon the country beyond their power to shake it off. Negro Equality did we say? Let us say Negro Superiority, that is what it amounts to when a few thousand Florida negroes can stifle the voice of three million white Pennsylvanians in the United States Senate.
"All who are in favor of Negro Superiority will vote for Grant; and let no one who votes for Grant forget what he is voting for."
We are sorely tempted just here to say a word or two in defence of the "ignorant negroes of the South" whose political equality with the "intelligent white men of the North" has so agitated the fountains of the Spirit's little soul; but we abstain. We began by condoling with the Spirit and we mean to do so to the end. Who so hard hearted as to turn a deaf ear to the panic striken cry of the Spirit when it is in momentary dread of being put in the balance with a Southern negro, and what is worse with a negro who is to have an even chance with itself, which, in the words suggested by its fears, "gives the negro a chance to outweigh it?" Of course it does. The Spirit is the very minimum of light weights, and it would be mere idle folly to set it against a brawny cotton picker who learned to write the word liberty with the point of his bayonet, and whose soul swelled with its inspiration as he stood side by side with the best white blood of the land, nobly fighting to preserve our freedom and secure his own. We earnestly entreat the friends of the Spirit to rescue it from such a horrible dilemma. Alas! 'tis worse than a dilemma. 'Tis the demon of Equality which haunts the Spirit in its dreams. Why there will soon be Senators in the United States Senate elected by negro members of Legislatures of Southern States. There will be members of the House who were elected by the direct votes of negroes at the ballot-box, and, says the Spirit, these Senators and Members will each have a full vote and a voice just like the Senators and Members elected by the white people of Pennsylvania; they will be equal to them. This equal vote and voice of white Senators and white Representatives from the South is evidently all wrong. It seems the Spirit favors nothing that is equal politically except taxation. But then taxation does not give the "ignorant negro" a chance to outweigh the "intelligent" Spirit. Therefore equal taxation is right. Just what fraction of a vote and a voice these Southern Senators and Members should have we are not informed, but however little, if it be necessary to protect the "intelligent whites" against the superiority of the "ignorant negroes," let them have just that little. If it degrades the white people of the North to do justice to their fellow man whom they have rendered poor, ignorant and helpless by slavery, then let them not do him justice.
The Spirit expresses its fears "that they (the people) will continue to look at it in the wrong light." If it be the wrong light to strike the chains from off the enslaved, to set the bondman free, to elevate, civilize and christianize, to make them equal under the law, to give them an equal start in the struggle of life, then we believe, in the Providence of God, they will so see it, even though, as the Spirit dreads, it would result in negro superiority. It can never degrade to do right. It always must degrade to do wrong. The white people cannot make the negro their equal. They can, and we confidently believe, as we believe that God is just, they will give him equal rights. Beyond this his destiny is in his own hands. If his intelligence, his virtue and integrity should equal those of the white race, he will then be our equal. Should they surpass them he will be our superior, and all the howling and raving of time serving demagogues, of which the Spirit is one, can no more prevent it than it can countervail the law of gravity.
(Column 03)Summary: The paper gives the official vote for additional law judge for the district including Franklin. Franklin gave 4,353 votes to the Republican Rowe and 4,234 to the Democrat Baer. Overall, Rowe received 10,711 votes and Baer 10,419 votes.
-Page 03- |
Court Proceedings
(Column 01)Summary: The paper prints the business of the county court, mostly dealing with criminal cases such as larceny and assault.
(Names in announcement: John Wolff, Peter Plowden, Martin Hoover, William Hance, Isaac Kuhn, Charles Jones, Peter Dorte, Elijah W. Wallace, Jacob Shaffer, Columbus Green, David Overkeesh, William M. Reed, Jacob Golden, George W. Kale, George KyleJr., Hannah Holland, Charles Jones, Isadore Stumbaugh, Brant Williams, Susan Buckner, Elizabeth Williams, Thomas Williams, Margaret Johnson, Rebecca Robinson, Rebecca Barnes, Cambridge Norris, Robert Lane, Edward Harmon)Full Text of Article:Inauguration of Dr. E. V. GerheartThere were no civil cases tried in court last week. The following criminal cases were disposed of in the Quarter Sessions up to Friday noon, when court adjourned until Monday next, the 9th inst:
Com. vs. John Wolff.--Wilful taking and carrying away of fruit, on oath of Simon Bitner. A true bill. Defendant pleaded not guilty. Verdict not guilty, and prosecutor to pay the costs.
Com. vs. Peter Plowden.--Assault and Battery, on oath of Martin Hoover. A true bill. Defendant pleaded not guilty. Verdict guilty, and sentenced to pay a fine of one cent and costs of prosecution.
Com vs. Wm. Hauce.--Larceny, on oath of Isaac Kuhn. Defendant pleaded guilty, and sentenced to pay a fine of one cent and costs of prosecution, and undergo an imprisonment in the Eastern Penitentiary for 1 year and 6 months.
Com. vs. Charles Jones--Assault and Battery, on oath of Peter Dorte. A true bill. Defendant pleaded not guilty. Verdict guilty, and sentenced to pay a fine of one cent and costs of prosecution.
Com. vs. Elijah W. Wallace.--Larceny, on oath of Jacob Shaffer. A true bill. Defendant pleaded not guilty. Verdict, guilty. Sentenced to pay a fine of $1 and costs of prosecution, and undergo an imprisonment in the county jail for 12 months.
Com. vs. Columbus Green.--Larceny, on oath of W. N. Horner. A true bill. Defendant pleaded not guilty. Verdict not guilty.
Com. vs. David Overkeesh--Assault and Battery, on oath of Wm. M. Reed. A true bill.--Defendant pleaded not guilty. Verdict, not guilty, and each party pay half the costs.
Com. vs. Jacob Golden.--Obstructing Highway, on oath of George W. Kale. A true bill. Defendant pleaded not guilty. Verdict, not guilty, and each party pay half the costs.
Com. vs. George Kyle, Jr.--Surety of the Peace, on oath of Hannah Holland. Case heard and defendant sentenced to pay the costs.
Com. vs Peter Dorte.--Assault and Battery on oath of Charles Jones. Not a true bill, and prosecutor to pay the costs.
Com. vs. Martin Hoover.--Assault and Battery, on oath of Peter Plowden. Not a true bill, and prosecutor to pay the costs.
Com. vs. Isadore Stumbaugh--Assault, on oath of Brant Williams. Not a true bill, and prosecutor to pay the costs.
Com. vs. Susan Buckner.--Assault, on oath of Peter Dorte. Not a true bill, and prosecutor to pay the costs.
Com. vs. Elizabeth Williams.--Assault and Battery, on oath of Thomas Williams. Not a true bill, and prosecutor to pay the costs.
Com. vs. Margaret Johnson.--Assault and Battery, on oath of Rebecca Robinson. Not a true bill, and prosecutor to pay the costs.
Coms. vs. Rebecca Barnes.--Assault, on oath of Cambridge Norris. Not a true bill and prosecutor to pay costs.
Com. vs. Robert Lane.--Assault and Battery, on oath of Cambridge Norris. Not a true bill, and prosecutor to pay the costs.
Com. vs. Edward Harmon.--Assault and Battery, on oath of James M'Elhare. Not a true bill and prosecutor to pay the costs.
(Column 01)Summary: Rev. Dr. E. V. Gerheart was installed in Mercersburg on October 26th as Professor of Theology at the Seminary of the German Reformed Church. He replaces the late Dr. Harbaugh. Rev. Dr. J. W. Nevin led the ceremonies and addressed the crowd. "Dr. Gerheart who now takes his place at the head of the German Reformed Church, though still comparatively a young man, has favorably impressed the theological world. Several works from his pen, among others a treatise on the system of Logic, have marked him a thinker of much clearness and logical force, and we doubt not his association with the Theological Seminary will widen its influence and infuse into it additional strength and vigor."The Monumental Association
(Names in announcement: Rev. Dr. E. V. Gerheart, Dr. Harbaugh, Rev. Dr. J. W. Nevin)
(Column 02)Summary: The paper reports that the Franklin County Monumental Association is flourishing in its work. They will hold a concert in Repository Hall on Thanksgiving that will showcase "the best musical talent of the town." The paper calls for a large turnout to support the construction of a monument. The organization will also hold a fair December 22-25. Contributions can be made to A. H. McCulloh.The Franklin County Teacher Institute
(Names in announcement: A. H. McCulloh)
(Column 02)Summary: The Franklin County Teacher's Institute will meet in Chambersburg beginning on November 16th. Prominent instructors from around the country will attend. "There can be no interest half so important to the community as that of Education, for upon the success of this depends the correct solution of almost every problem of our varied human life. The favorable character of Chambersburg for hospitality is so well known that it is not necessary to suggest to its citizens the propriety of opening their doors to the teachers during their brief stay."Latest News! Grant Triumphantly Elected! The Republic Saved! Treason Defeated!
(Column 03)Summary: The paper prints state election returns from around the country showing a large victory for Grant.The Vote of Franklin County
(Column 03)Summary: The paper prints the results of the vote of Franklin County in the most recent election for auditor general and president, along with the 1866 results for governor.Married
(Column 04)Summary: David A. Heckman and Miss Eliza A. Flack, daughter of George Flack, both of Hamilton, were married on October 27th at the residence of the bride's father by the Rev. J. Keller Miller.Died
(Names in announcement: David A. Heckman, Eliza A. Flack, Rev. J. Keller Miller)
(Column 04)Summary: Alfred G. Monn died suddenly on October 24th near Quincy at the residence of his brother Andrew S. Monn. He was 31 years old.
(Names in announcement: Andrew S. Monn, Alfred G. Monn)
-Page 04- |