The True Issue (New Orleans newspaper - 5/10/1860)

The True Issue  -  The Daily True Delta  (New Orleans)  May 10, 1860


Our readers must be by this time pretty familiar with the exact issue which is before the South, and which was made the pretense for the secession of the delegations or fragments 0f delegations of some half dozen 0f States, mainly of the minor orders, from the National Democratic Convention and from the National Democratic party, they have undertaken to divide and to destroy.  The real cause for the secession was the certainty which confronted the bolters that the nomination of Stephen A. Douglas could not be defeated, nor, if nominated, his election prevented; hence they had no other resource, the jobbers and schemers, who have so long controlled the imbecility and corruption of the Federal Government, than to retire into fitting obscurity, accompanied by the execration and contempt of the country, or to bolt the Convention, set up some creature of their own for President, and each for himself, and the Devil for all, make the best terms possible with the enemies of democracy among the crowd of mongrel aspirants for national supremacy the breaking up of the Democratic party has emboldened to take the field.  But the bolters at Charleston felt that some excuse for their treason to the party whose generosity they had all enjoyed, and whose confidence they were meditating so foully to abuse, must be advanced, and they accordingly took issue upon the readoption of the Cincinnati platform, alleging that it sanctioned the popular sovereignty heresy, which they insisted, aye these very men who were the authors of what they term a disgrace and a huge wrong to the South, insisted should be repudiated and denounced, otherwise they would break up the Convention and destroy the great conservative party of the Union, which alone stands or can successfully stand between the South and her implacable foes.
       
Two sets of political schemers combined in this movement—one, the more powerful and artful of the two, was the Bright, Buchanan, Slidell, Ike Cook and Fernando Wood free corps, of which Mouton of this State was honored with the leadership, and whose aim was place at any price, regardless of principles or consequences; the other wing, or the fanatical branch, was marshalled by Yancey, of Alabama, and had Jeff. Davis and the fire-eaters generally in the background. 
Davis for some time past had been studiously conciliating the first branch of these corps, and, in the hope of getting a nomination for the presidency from them somehow or other, was not disinclined to trail after the lead of such a leash of beauties as Ike Cook, John Slidell and Fernando Wood.  Before the Convention met it had been agreed between these high contracting parties, and not objected to by the partisans of the score of other equally eligible aspirants for executive honors, that somehow or other Douglas must be defeated, when each schemer hoped his own chance might come up then; but the backbone was wanting when the final tug came, and only the wretched rump, whose discordant proceedings on the last day of their being together we laid before our readers yesterday, had the nerve and the effrontery to present themselves as seceders from the ranks of the Democracy.  Bound together by no tie other than hope of individual success and enrichment from the accidents of the desperate game they were playing against their country, the result of their disgraceful bolt might easily have been foreseen, for it happened as every one anticipated—eventuating in a general scramble as to whom should be preferred for the honors they impudently assumed the authority to dispense.   A portion of the Louisiana delegation early received a hint from their director to edge out of the body where it was manifest he had rather a slim hold; but the vigilant of Avoyelles, who had a role of his own to get through with, seemed to regard such hints as not in the bond, and tenaciously clung to his post, even after the last mark of the fugitive Bayard’s form was visible upon the soft cushioned chair he so dignifiedly and apparently so innocently occupied.
 
But Mouton, the tenacious bolter from the regular Convention, was not entirely alone in his glory, for Yancey, the loquacious, the consistent Yancey, the original Squatter Sovereignty man, Cass, Douglas, and all others to the contrary notwithstanding, stood up like a veritable fire eater, apparently none the worse for not being immersed in that floral shower the beauty of Charleston had, by orders, been at such pains to accumulate in the galleries of the hall in which the National Convention assembled, to drown the champion of disunion in, when the happy moment arrived which was to witness the final overthrow of this old Republic Washington, Jefferson and Jackson vainly labored to create, consolidate and perpetuate.  Yancey, the author of the now famous or infamous Squatter Sovereignty heresy, as he and his fireeating confederates style it, was there cheek-by-jowl by the ex-governor of poor unconscious Louisiana, where people have just about as much idea of giving up the Union as they have to turn infidels and defy their Maker.

These innocents could not destroy the Union as they speedily discovered; but they, nevertheless, chuckled with delight at their success at doing the next thing to it—destroying the great party, which alone has the power, the vitality, and the prestige to keep it together.  That the destruction of the Union was the grand aim of the Yanceys and the Moutons of the bolters there can be no doubt; they were acting on a foregone conclusion, and were not animated by calculations of plunder like the Ike Cook, John Slidell, and Fernando Wood Company, which was in the same venture with them.  Both Yancey and Mouton, as we have said, made the reproduction of the popular sovereignty doctrine by the National Convention, the excuse for their departure from the Democratic party and the disruption of the National Convention.  Let us now, then, examine history a little in regard to the origin of this doctrine, the faithful maintenance of which has ostensibly brought upon the great statesman of the Union so much of obloquy and unpopularity in the South.  Let us examine whether popular sovereignty be of Northern or of Southern birth, a creation of those hostile to slavery or a well-matured principle which, fairly carried out, must secure to the slave States their real strength and their legitimate influence in the confederacy.  To do this, at the risk of being considered prolix, we shall take our readers with us in an examination of a historical work, in which justice is done impartially and fairly, it cannot be denied, in apportioning the credit of the authorship of the Squatter Sovereignty creed.  The work we refer to is “Benton’s Thirty Years’ View,” and the chapter is the one hundred and seventy-eighth. Speaking of the presidential nomination of the year 1848, and of the Democratic convention and platform, that deceased statesman thus discourseth: “The construction of the platform, or party political creed for the campaign, was next entered upon, and one was produced, interminably long, and long since forgotten.  The value of all such constructions may be seen in comparing what was then adopted, or rejected as political test, with what has since been equally rejected or adopted for the same purpose.  For example (the italics are ours), the principle o f Squatter Sovereignty, that is to say, the right o f the inhabitants of the TERRITORIES to decide the question of slavery for themselves, was then repudiated, and by a vote virtually unanimous; it is since adopted by a vote equally unanimous.  Mr. Yancey of Alabama, submitted this resolution as an article of Democratic faith to be inserted in the creed, to wit:

“THAT THE DOCTRINE OF NON-INTERFERENCE WITH THE RIGHTS OF PROPERTY OF ANY PORTION OF THIS CONFEDERATION, BE IT IN THE STATES OR THE TERRITORIES, BY ANY OTHER THAN THE PARTIES INTERESTED IN THEM, IS THE TRUE REPUBLICAN DOCTRINE RECOGNIZED BY THIS BODY,” 

that is by the National Democratic Convention which nominated Lewis Cass, of Michigan, for President, and William O. Butler, of Kentucky, for Vice President.

In 1848, Mr. Yancey, of Alabama, and the supporters of extreme Southern views in the same body, sought ineffectually to engraft on the platform of the national democracy, for the preservation of the most cherished interest of the South, a principle for the maintenance of which now the same Mr. Yancey and his supporters of 1848 denounce the fearless Stephen A. Douglas, bolt from the National Convention, and labor, with all their might and their malice, to annihilate the Democratic party as a national omnipotent party organization.  Do such men imagine the people to be insane, that they will follow their lead; or so steeped in corruption that they will listlessly witness the destruction of their government and dismemberment of their glorious Union under such dictation?  On the contrary, these disturbers of the public peace, these conspirators against the integrity of the Republic, these aspiring and plotting demagogues will discover that the people are not the fools or the madmen they take them for, and that they know the true patriot from the impudent pretender and imposter, Stephen A. Douglas from the Slidells, the Yanceys and the lower herd who bay at their heels and decry in impotent ravings his universal popularity with his countrymen.