Transcriptions from the California Daily Times, Sacremento

 

Donated by Cornelius Cole

 

Aug 15, 1856

 

Began by covering the California Sate Convention

 

It is not a rare occurrence in popular government to witness an exhibition of true sovereignty in the uprising of the masses.  But never since we have had a distinct national existence as the popular will been of such an overwhelming character as in the present Presidential campaign.  Throughout all the Easter, Middle and Western States, this mighty tide of opinion is rolling on, and its waves are as resistless as the ocean surge.  The slave oligarchy, like the Britons of old, believing in the superior power of Buchanan, have placed him, their Canute, before it, and to please his worshipers, the wretched man was compelled to bid its proud waves to be staid.  Yet the tide bears on, and Canute and all his hosts are fleeing.  The whole people are aroused:

 

“The come as the winds come

When forests are blended

The come as the waves come,

When navies are rended.”

 

And why is all this commotion?  Is the cause imaginary?  Far from it.  A course of policy in our government directly opposed to its spirit and genius, and which tended fast to the destruction of this temple of liberty, has aroused the nation, and the sons of ’56 are but rekindling the fires that were lighted by the fathers of ’76.  The patriotism of the country is fairly elicited.  Party associations have lost their charm.  Hundred of old-established journals, impelled alone by love of country, have hoisted the banner of Fremont and Freedom, and are doing service valiantly in the cause of Republicanism.  And even in this Pacific State, slavery-ridden and disgraced as it is, the spirit of true patriotism begins to burn.  Citizens are hating the inspiration of absent brothers, and are determined to be relieved from the oppression of the slave power.  The mountains and valleys of California are filled with the elements of Republicanism, even as her hills are with gold.

 

Her citizens are lovers of labor and liberty, Free Territory and Free Speech, and will give a hearty support to her own Fremont, the most enterprising man of the age, and the man above all others fitted to carry out that great enterprise of the age, a Continental Railroad.

 

The Dromedary papers have accused John C. Fremont of almost every villainy under the sun, except being in favor of slavery extension and opposed to the construction of the Pacific and Atlantic Railroad, but have failed to prove a single one of their charges.  There are raking earth and brain for matter to coin a new false-hood, which in their opinion, might militate against him.  He, they say, stole cattle away down in Los Angeles, and refused to divide his sugar with his companions.  All these, save the running away with Miss Benton, and eating dog, have been disproved.  A full explanation of the cattle charge, most triumphantly exonerating Fremont, was given in our issue of yesterday.

 

Again, they say he is the son of poor parent – that his father taught school, and that Fremont himself was a kind of charity boy.  Well, we admit all this.  He has risen from the ranks of the people; he is one of the people, and hence is he the people’s candidate for president.  And if he shall be appointed to command the Ship of State – as by God’s blessing, the activity of his friends, and the good-sense of the whole people he will – it cannot be said of him that he snaked through the cabin windows on the quarter deck.  He has worked his way before the mast; and has much practice as a pilot through before unexplored regions of his native land.

 

Now the last charge – the very last charge but forth by his traducers – is that he was not born in honest wedlock.  They offer not one particle of evidence to sustain this base accusation; nay, they even tacitly admit its incorrectness, but still they have published it to the world.  This is a poor dodge – a mean dodge – a dodge unworthy of any person claiming to have a single spark of manliness within him.  And for the sake of our common humanity, we thank our God that, so far as we know, the Boston Telegraph, Richmond (Va.) Dispatch, and Democratic State Journal are the only papers in the nation that have yet given publicity to this most outrageous slander.  They are among the most unscrupulous sheets now supporting the iniquities of Douglas, Pierce & Co.; and it would seem from this that they are determined to stop at nothing, however unjust, that in their opinion may tend to the success of border ruffianism.

 

Never before,no matter how hotly contested was the political field, has such an outrageous and unmanly charge been made by the most worthless wretches against their opponents.  It should consign its authors and circulators to eternal infamy, and it will.  There is some sense of decency yet left in the American people, however much these papers may believe to the contrary.  No man who has any regard for the respect or intelligence of his readers would, except in a moment of phrensy, give currency to such a report.  These worthless charges are brought forth only as a dernier resort in the absence of all substantial or legitimate accusations – will fall far short of their mark, and recoil with redoubled fury on the heads of those who originate and countenance them.

 

Sept. 2 1856

 

Duty

 

“Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty,” said Thomas Jefferson, the great father of Republicanism, and a more important truth was never uttered.  A desire to acquire power, inconsistent with equal rights, has ever occupied a prominent position in the human mind.  Many people of intelligence and wisdom entertain the opinion that an unequal disposition of authority has its origin in nature, and is sanctified by a law of the Creator.  But it requires some stronger reason than the existence of the simple desire for power to prove that such a desire ought to be freely gratified, and that its gratification is altogether in accordance with the well-being of society.  The existence of a proposition may possible prove some facts in nature, but in this instance it is deducing a cause from an effect, which although not the least, is nevertheless an unsafe mode of reasoning.  That all men are created equal, may be, and is a truth of self-evident to the minds of some; but it is far from being established in the estimation of a great majority of the human family.  In fact, the assertion is considered untrue in every sense by at least nine-tenths of mankind, and the inclination to disregard it renders double forcible the remark that vigilance is necessary to liberty.  Let no citizen hope to avoid responsibility in public matters.

 

Sept. 3 1856

 

The persecution of the Free States men in Kansas has no parallel in the modern times, and has seldom been surpassed any thing recorded in history.  The efforts of Caligula and other Emperors of Rome to suppress Christianity in that Empire, and the relentless war carried on in the thirteenth century against the Alikeness, come nearest to resembling it in character, but were not more unfeeling and inhuman.  As then, so now, murder arson, robbery and every species of torment from tar and feathers to mutilations, mayhems and even death, indicate the temper of the persecutors.  And as in early times a refusal to renounce the Christian religion, [sic] was a pretext for tyrants to exercise all manner of cruelty upon its devotees, so in our day and in our own country, not to renounce liberty is a sufficient incentive for the supporters of slavery to exercise the most unheard of barbarity upon our citizens.  Pierce the Caligula, and Atchison the Simon de Montfort of modern times are as relentless as their types of old.  They go forth as shamelessly, and are as regardless of the opinions of the rest of mankind as the worst of Roman despots; and as if to make the similarity complete they can boast as many sycophantic followers.

 

It is only posterity that will do these worthies justice.  Future generations will blush with shame when they behold the black page of our countrys’ [sic] history which marks the present administration; and the anathemas of countless millions that will come after us, will help to sink the names of our petty tyrants to the lowest depths of infamy.

 

The spirits of brave men murdered on the plains of Kansas will rise up through all time to condemn them; and though they may escape the summary punishment merited by their bloody deeds, the vengeance of heaven is certain, and outraged humanity always and every-where will mete out to their memories just condemnation.

 

Prospectus, which appeared daily in the newspaper until October 7

 

These are stirring times.  They are big with events.  Parties have forgotten their early policy, or heeding it not, have run headlong into violence.  They have become advocates of Slavery, and favor its propagation in Territory once solemnly devoted to Freedom.  The wise admonitions of our revolutionary sires as well as of the many great and good men who, since their day, have held place in the councils of the nation, are lost in the madness that has taken possession of, and now controls, the dominant party of the nation.

 

The Baltimore Platform, which the whole people, with great unanimity, approved by the election of Franklin Pierce to the Presidency, has long since been spit upon and repudiated by Douglas, Pierce, and their associates.  The pledge then and there given to the entire nation, that the Democratic Party would resist all attempt at renewing in Congress or out of it the agitation of the slavery question under whatever form the attempt might be made, has been most shamefully disregarded.  The allegation made at the same time and under all the solemnities of the occasion, that the Democratic Party did then, and would continue to regard the Compromise Measures of 1850 as a finality of slavery agitation, has also been wantonly broken.  To violate this faith – to rend asunder and scatter to the winds these sacred promises – the whole of the vast patronage in the hands of the Federal Executive has been prostituted; dealt out to strengthen the faltering or purchase the votes of those whom flattery could not secure nor threats intimidate.

 

Some of the fruits of this great national wrong may have ripened.  Kansas and Squatter Sovereignty – sovereignty ending in a tragedy, imprisonment, murder, arson, and universal strive, are among them.  The appalling sight of a ate Vice President of the this Union, Atchison, leading an intoxicated mob, and himself leveling the cannon to batter down the Free States Hotel of Lawrence, is among them.  The scene of industrious men, guilty of no offense against morality or constitutional laws, flying for their lives before this marauding band, is among them.  Slavery must have its offerings, and even its hecatombs, and Freedoms’ soil must be trodden by the gyved limbs, not only of the Ethiopian, but also of the Caucasian race, (see Kansas reports,) in order that the market for slaves may be enlarged.  Peaceable unoffending citizens who had left the home of childhood with all its tender associations, to hew them out new dwelling places on the rich soil and teeming plains of the Central Territory, must be hunted and shot down like deer, because the will not fall down and worship the golden calf set up Douglas and his impious crew.  Their cities have been besieged; their best men exiled, imprisoned, or murdered, because the whole people would not bow down at the nod of these Geslers.  The liberty of speech as been denied- the voice of a Free Press silence by burying its material beneath the waters of the Missouri, and waylaying and mangling the person of its editor.  And for what?  To advance Slavery.

 

Our own worthless Congressman, while under the influence of a night’s debauch, brutally surrendered a worthy Irishman, because he dared to be a man and would not tamely brook the insolence of this distinguished scion of a bastard Chivalry – this worthy representative of California Democracy.  Another Member of Congress from South Carolina, and a representative of the Democracy of that State, made a most cowardly assault upon and horribly beat, while in his seat in the Senate Chamber, the polished, erudite and eloquent Senator from Massachusetts, Mr. Sumner, because he asserted what he had a perfect right to assert about South Corolina [sic] and her sons.

 

But this is not all.  The leaders of this Democracy, par excellence of the nation, loud-mouthed swaggerers, political gamblers, and chronic office-seekers, lately met at Cincinnati, erected a platform endorsing all these outrages – moral, social and political – and set James Buchanan upon it, to walk over a prostrate people into the Presidency.  Before doing this, however, they espied the California Congressman, whose hands were yet reeking with the warm blood of his fellow-man, and invited him to an honorary seat in that body!!  And this, too, in the very teeth of, and scorning, solemn remonstrance against it.  But the measure of California shame was not yet full.  That Convention, to crown its repeated acts of contempt for us, spurned and utterly repudiated our great wish and want – the pacific railroad.  And then after having done and endorsed all these villainous transactions = which, if one-twentieth of them were committed by and individual, would consign him to the gallows and eternal infamy – they have the effrontery to come before the country and ask to be sustained.  They appeal for a verdict.  Let justice be done, and that party pronounced guilty.

 

To withstand this torrent of aggression, to rebuke this insolence, to chastise these freebooters, to scatter this nest of marauders, and to check this monstrous and ever-increasing wrong has the Republican Party become organized.  The great East lifts up its full-toned voice and sends greeting to the fertile and auriferous West, bidding us look at the brilliant prospects of the Sun of November, our own citizens whose lot and life has been cast among us – John Charles Fremont.

 

The Times will not lag in the chase, nor dally in the contest.  Let the friends of the Pacific Railroad, Freedom and Fremont, be up and doing.  We have a wily and daring foe to contend with – a foe whose settled policy is that the end will justify the means.  however [sic] base, and who will stop and nothing to secure victory.

 

Let Republican Clubs be organized – talk to friends and neighbors – canvass your districts.

 

See the rates of the Campaign, Weekly and Daily paper elsewhere, and circulate the documents.  The battle is upon us and we must conquer.  The happiness of a mighty people depends upon it.

 

To Doughfaces

October 9, 1856

 

You are as pusillanimous a set of curs as ever disgraced any country.  You are utterly unworthy [sic] American citizenship.  You have not the requisite independence for freemen.  Had you lived in the times of the Revolution you would have been tories.  You would then, as you do now, lick the hand that smote you.  You disgrace the name your fathers bore.  You dare not be men – you are mere serfs.  You have been whining for years about the oppressions of chivalry.  When at a respectful distance you have cursed your proslavery masters high and low.  You have been taxed by them to the last cent.  For years have they ruled you as with a rod of iron.  They have supped while you have waited – they have danced while you have piped.  They have controlled all offices, State, County and City, and spurned Free State men.  You have writhed under these things and you have resolved to resist.  You have endured it patiently but you have hoped for relief.  You have declared that you would not always be slaves, but what are you doing?  Or the first time an opportunity is offered to carry out your alleged purposes, and now you refuse to act.  At last a strictly anti-chivalry party has sprung up, but like miserable curs you are still fawning around your masters, more servile minions than every.  Truly if there is a being that is to be both despised and pitied, it is the doughface.