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Staunton Spectator: January 21, 1868 Go To Page : 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 |

Covington and Ohio Railroad
(Column 04)

Summary: Address to the people of Augusta by E. Fontaine, president of the Virginia Central Railroad Company, on the importance of supporting the Covington and Ohio Railroad. He computes the tax burden for subscribing to the road, and goes over the funding the road has from other sources.

Action of the Radicals
(Column 01)

Summary: Discusses a letter from the Spectator's Washington correspondent, who writes a dramatic piece criticizing the Radicals and Grant.

Full Text of Article:

The space we designed devoting to comments on the various recent revolutionary steps taken by Congress, we surrender to make room for the lengthy and interesting letter of our Washington City Correspondent. We do this the more willingly as we have filled a considerable portion of our space with extracts from other journals which present similar views to those we would express in reference to the unconstitutional and revolutionary preceedings of that unscrupulous body. If the President and the Supreme Court exhibit the proper degree of firmness and determined resolution, the Radical party will be overthrown and ruined at the next election; but if the President and the Supreme Court shall prove deficient in the requisite degree of moral courage, then the Government as a Republic will cease to exist, and the very worst kind of military despotism will take its place.

Grant is a disgraced man, and his duplicity and treachery have withered the laurels which wreathed his brow. Dark clouds, threatening a terrific storm of revolution, darken the political sky, but we do not tremble with fear. We believe that the Radicals are madly rushing upon ruin, and the very means they are adopting to effect their wicked ends will be so overruled by a wise Providence as to frustrate their evil purposes and to bring merited punishment upon them. Retributive justice is upon their track and will, in time, overtake them. They will yet writhe under the scorpion lash of popular condemnation. The forbearance of an outraged people, born to an inheritance of freedom, cannot always abide -- there is a point beyond which forbearance ceases to be a virtue, and that point has been reached, and the people will arise in the majesty of their strength and hurl from places of honor and power those who have betrayed them and trampled upon their rights, and will visit upon them their biting scorn and fiery indignation. The people of the South should be true to themselves and await the result with patience.

Congress Rampant
(Column 01)

Summary: Discusses acts of Congress. Describes as unconstitutional the measure passed by Congress to require that the Supreme Court have a two-thirds majority to declare an act of Congress unconstitutional.

Full Text of Article:

In view of the revolutionary and outrageous proceedings of Congress, on Monday, the 13th inst., the Alexandria Gazette says that Congress mounted a high horse again and rode at a furious rate. The Senate sustained Stanton, and refused to concur in his suspension from the office of Secretary of War. The House passed a bill for the "reconstruction" of the Supreme Court to suit the present schemes of the Radical party, requiring the assent of two-thirds of the Supreme Court in order to set aside as unconstitutional a law passed by Congress. As the Court now consists of eight members, being thus fixed by Radical legislation, a vote of six out of the eight will be requisite to make two-thirds. Mr. Garfield, of Ohio, attempted to introduce a bill "to reduce and improve the military establishment by the discharge of one major-general -- the one who was last commisioned in that grade before the 1st of January, 1868. This is a mean method of attacking Gen. Hancock, without mentioning his name, as he is the major general indicated. The resolution was not passed, but will be renewed on Monday (yesterday.) It does really seem as if the Radical leaders were determined to go to the utmost length in revolutionizing the government by legislation. The New York Times, a Radical journal, declares that the extremists "are reckless, if not desperate." It adds that "for twelve months past they have been engaged in tying the hands of the President, and stripping him of authority conferred by the Constitution; and now they are about to attempt the same operation upon the Supreme Court, with the view of preventing an adverse decision upon the reconstruction acts." It may well be asked that, when the overthrow of such a party -- a party which tramples on the Constitution because it impedes their policy -- comes, as come it must -- what will be the fate of that policy - what is the upshot of their plotting and legislating and usurping? The clouds were never darker over the country, than they are at present. The ominous mutterings of the storm are heard and heeded in the North; for the South, though it hears them, is passive, helpless and without power to interpose in any way whatever. If the country is to be saved the "reaction" among the people of the North and West, which has commenced, must go on!

[No Title]
(Column 02)

Summary: Expresses a fear that the Radicals will provide Grant with too much power, setting the stage for a dictatorship similar to that of Louis Napoleon in France.

Full Text of Article:

The Radical Leaders in Congress, says the Alexandria Gazette, are foolishly imagining that by their course of action they are strengthening the legislative power which is in their hands, and which they hope yet to control. They are, none of them, statesmen enough to see that they are defeating their own purposes, and that by gradually placing executive authority, almost without stint, in the grasp of General Grant, they are fashioning a MASTER for themselves as well as for others. They are on the high road to a military despotism over the whole country, themselves included. One of these days, they will wake up to a sense of their condition! The National Convention in France went on precisely in the same way. They had at first a government carried on by legislative decrees; then, by legislative committees; then, by "leaders" --such as Danton and Robespierre -- then, as they saw the power departing from them, they frantically grasped after it again, but their feeble hands could not long hold the reins -- and it all ended in the supremacy of a Military Chieftain. And the people tired, sick, and disgusted with the changes and trials and sufferings, and evils of a legislative government exercised by demagogues, gladly sought peace and quiet, and refuge under the strong rule of one man; and exchanged a Republic for an Empire, and an Assembly of Legislators for an Emperor with the powers of a Dictator -- and Libery in France lay prostrate under the heel of Napoleon. We have no Napoleon -- but we may have a much weaker man, in every respect, for a master!

[No Title]
(Column 03)

Summary: Argues that the Radicals have turned to direct legislative action as a way to "put the Southern States under Congo rule".

Full Text of Article:

The Radicals, says the Enquirer, hope to escape their own doom by precipitating ours; and hence the result which they had intended to consummate under color of pretended conventions and elections and the like, they now propose to decree at a word. The prospect is, that they will cut short the mummery which was intended from the first only as a sham and a show, and summarily put the Southern States under Congo rule, by a mere resolution of Congress.

To give force to this opinion and to strengthen our own conviction, we need not recite in detail the acts of the present Congress which indicate the Radical attitude. Scarcely a day passes in which abundant proof is not afforded. But if any doubt remained, surely the proceedings in Washington, resulting in restoring the infamous Stanton to his station as a spy in the Cabinet will remove it all.

While this new attitude of the Radicals implies, as we have seen, no new purpose, yet it has served to lift the veil of pretence, and reveal their full designs, to the comprehension of the blindest. They discard nothing of their original design but its machinery. Our people all now see that the courts must save us, or the African yoke will soon be on our necks. Hence the intense anxiety with which every eye is turned to Washington and the eagerness with which every report is caught up which tells of the probable action of the Supreme Court on some cases which have gone thither.

[No Title]
(Column 01)

Summary: The paper announces that Staunton citizens delinquent on state taxes will have their names posted on the Court House door. The paper hopes nobody will be put in that position. "It is dreadful hard, but taxes must be paid. How else could the negroes and Radicals in the Convention get their eight dollars per day? Can any one fail to feel it his religious and patriotic duty to pay his taxes under these circumstances?"

[No Title]
(Column 01)

Summary: The paper calls attention to the address of Col. E. Fontaine asking Augusta citizens to vote in favor of the proposed subscription of $300,000 in stock of the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad.

Staunton Lyceum
(Column 01)

Summary: The Lyceum debated whether or not dead languages should be taught in college. J. M. Hanger, James Bumgardner, Jr., John B. Baldwin, George B. Taylor, Pike Powers and F. M. Young argued in the affirmative; Samuel B. Coleman, J. H. Hewitt, and Y. H. Peyton in the negative. It was decided in the affirmative by a 14-3 vote. Dr. C. R. Harris will lecture on Friday night.
(Names in announcement: J. M. Hanger, James BumgardnerJr., John B. Baldwin, George B. Taylor, Pike Powers, F. M. Young, Samuel B. Coleman, J. H. Hewitt, Y. H. Peyton, Dr. C. R. Harris)

"The Negro: What is his Ethnological Status."
(Column 01)

Summary: The paper calls attention to a book arguing that African-Americans have no souls.

Full Text of Article:

The above is the title of a pamphlet by "Ariel," a minister of the Gospel, which has created great interest wherever introduced, and has been read with eagerness. It is for sale in this place by Hunter and Nowlin and by Robert Cowan, Booksellers and Stationers. It maintains the startling propositions that the negro was made before Adam, that he is therefore a beast in God's nomenclature, and therefore has no soul, and that the world was destroyed by the flood for the crime of the amalgamation or miscegenation of the white race with negroes; that that is a crime for which there is no expiation, that it has never been forgiven, and never will be.

We think that there is more evidence that the negroes have souls than that the Radicals have who are making cat's-paws of the negroes to subserve their selfish and wicked purposes.

Marriages
(Column 04)

Summary: Joseph Sniteman and Hester Margaret Showalter, both of Augusta, were married near Waynesboro on January 2nd by the Rev. Martin Garber.
(Names in announcement: Joseph Sniteman, Hester Margaret Showalter, Rev. Martin Garber)

Marriages
(Column 04)

Summary: John C. Wise and Miss Sarah E. Plecker, daughter of Samuel Plecker of Augusta, were married on January 9th by the Rev. J. C. Hensell.
(Names in announcement: John C. Wise, Sarah E. Plecker, Samuel Plecker, Rev. J. C. Hensell)

Deaths
(Column 04)

Summary: Mrs. Ann R. Stubbs, wife of R. P. Stubbs, died on January 15th. She was 40 years old and left a husband and five children. "She was a loving wife and mother, and an earnest christian."
(Names in announcement: Ann R. Stubbs, R. P. Stubbs)