Old times in Tennessee, with historical, personal, and political scraps and sketches, Part 34

Author: Guild, Jo. C. (Josephus Conn), 1802-1883
Publication date: 1878
Publisher: Nashville, Tavel, Eastman & Howell
Number of Pages: 1012


USA > Tennessee > Old times in Tennessee, with historical, personal, and political scraps and sketches > Part 34


Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).


Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45



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States, which they detest and abhor, thereby seeking to deprive the South of its manhood. The entire South has felt the unpar- alleled oppression and tyranny which have marked the career of this party for more than three years. They have levied extraor- dinary taxation and impositions upon the people of the South, compelling them to perform all the onerous duties of citizens of the government, and denying them their constitutional right to vote or to hold office, or to be fairly represented either in the State Legislatures or in the Congress of the United States; they have nullified the trial by jury; they have abolished the habeas corpus, that most sacred writ of English and American liberty ; they have overthrown the freedom of speech and of the press ; they have substituted arbitrary seizures and arrests, and militia trials and secret-star-chamber inquisitions, for the constitutional tribunals; they have covered the entire South with detectives, and have established a system of spies and espoinage ; they have established bastiles all over the South for the incarceration of our citizens, and sentenced them either to death or ignominious pun- ishment by drum-head court-martials ; they have quartered stand- ing armies in times of peace among the people of the South to control elections, to eat out their substance, and enslave the whites by bringing them under the supremacy of negro governments ; they have made the military satraps superior to the civil judge ; justice is not administered according to the constitution, and laws made in pursuance thereof, but according to the hatred or preju- diced will of the military commander. This Radical party has assumed, and acts upon the assumption, that all power is vested in, and should be exercised by, Congress. It is seeking to absorb all other powers of government. The executive is no longer the commander of the army and navy of the United States. No longer has he the power to appoint and remove, recognized by the constitution, and acted on from the formation of the govern- ment. He is not even permitted to choose and appoint his con- fidential advisers-his cabinet; and if he attempts to remove a debased and contemptible cabinet officer, who was his own enemy, a spy upon his conduct, he is impeached. This party has invaded the precincts of the Supreme Court, hitherto, by the constitution and the purity of its ermine, consecrated to liberty, by depriving that court of the power of reviving by appeal, the unconstitutional


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acts of this worse than " Rump Parliament," and cutting off a portion of its original jurisdiction. To make themselves supreme they have threatened every department with impeachment, there- by endeavoring to make the President and the judiciary subser- vient to Congress. They have manifested an arrogance and an usurpation of power as dangerous to public liberty as the National Assembly which produced a despotism in France and ended in the consulate and empire, or that of the "Rump Parliament " which produced " the Commonwealth " and ultimately the revolu- tion which brought William and Mary on the throne.


This Radical party ignores the great principle that ours is a Federal Union-formed by compact of sovereign States, retaining all the sovereign power which is not expressly delegated by the constitution ; and to perpetuate their central despotism, they have brought into the field in this great political contest, as their leader, Gen. Grant, the commander of the army of the United States, and of the votes of the South, relying upon his military fame to glare and blind the people to that despotism which afflicts the land, cramps its industries and energies, and destroys the trade and commerce of the country, and which, if not successfully opposed, will destroy the liberties of the people. I have nothing personal to say against Gen. Grant, but we cannot ignore the fact that he has loaned his name to this party for his own aggrandize- ment, and to fasten this despotism upon the country, and every one who properly appreciates public liberty should stand opposed to his election.


The people of the United States are astounded at this military chieftain becoming the candidate of the Radical party. He tamely submits to Congress, and says that he shall have no policy of his own in administering the government. General Jack- son has truly said that he who submits to a " mum " candidate, or one who has no policy of his own, while his liberties are in- volved in the contest, deserves to be enslaved. This position of Gen. Grant is sufficient of itself to render him unfit to be the President of forty millions of people.


It is the fly found in the ointment that mars the fragrance of the perfume. Will that Congress stay their revolutionary meas- ures, and desist from their measures against the rights of the States and their citizens, with their attacks upon the other de-


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partsments of the government, with their unconstitutional recon- struction acts, which have deprived the people of their suffrage, representation, and self-government; who have forced upon the people of the South a parcel of advanturers and barpies, bankrupt in fortune as well as character, who have seized the public offices, plundered the people, and robbed them of their liberty, the right of voting and of making for themselves good and wholesome laws; a parcel of " bummers" and "scalawags," who make and fill sinecures, and who impose heavy and onerous taxation upon the people of the South, not to pay off the public debt or to support a just and economical government, but to feed and pamper a par- cel of "jay-hawkers," who, while they rob the people of their liberty, eat out their substance ; who contaminate everything they touch and poison wherever they repose. We want a President who will aid in restoring the constitution and the rights of the people, and remove this fetid fungus from the body politic, which stinks in the nostrils of the white folks, and which the negro be- gins to regard as a "skunk."


In the train of this central despotism we find its attendant ad- juncts-wanton extravagance and peculations upon the treasury and the people-which of itself, in any age of the world, would hurl those usurpers from power. When we come to look into the expenses of our government under the Radical party for the last three years of profound peace, we find the astounding sum of $820,000,000, being at the rate of $270,000,000 a year, and this is without including the interest paid on the public debt. We find for the four years preceding the war the expenses of the government were only $256,000,000; for one year of Radical rule it amounts to $14,000,000 more than for the four years pre- ceding the war. The War Department for four years of Mr. Polk's administration, in which we carried on a successful war with Mexico, and added California to the Union, carrying our flag from the Atlantic to the Pacific coast, only cost $90,000,000. For the three years of peace under Radical rule the expenses have run up to $284,000,000, at the rate of $128,000,000 per year. The Navy Department for four years cost the country $62,000,- 000, when our ships traversed every water, and our flag floated in every port, carrying on and protecting commerce that annually added vastly to the wealth of the country; yet, for the three


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years of peace it has cost the people $117,000,000. The trade of the country is paralyzed, commerce destroyed, and we have little or nothing to protect, either at home or abroad. What do we pay into the treasury per year by this most onerous and unequal taxation and revenue exactions ? $590,000,000. Yet our over- whelming public debt is increasing on us every day. For the last month of June it increased $50,000,000. How comes all this? We must have a standing army in times of peace of 50,000 to control the elections of the South ; and a Freedman's Bureau at the expense of many millions, an electionering machine, pat- ented by Congress, to form secret leagues of negroes throughout the South, to make them the deluded instruments, having dis- franchised the white man, to place in office a parcel of shoe-blacks and hostlers of the North, and with a few honorable exceptions, the home Radical who had not the manliness to take either side while the battle raged, but after it was over, and the national flag floated over the South, became most intensely "loil." The "scalawags" of the South joined the "carpet-bagger" of the North, became the head and center of negro leagues, made the negro the voter, themselves the office-holders, and the white man the tax- payer. In former times the usual pay of a regiment of one thous- and men was $1,000,000 per year, now it amounts to over $2,- 000,000-upwards of $2,000 to a man in times of peace. $1,200,- 000,000 have been collected from the people within the last three years, and still the public debt is not diminished, and every day is on the increase. In honest times the cost of Congress per year ranged between three and four hundred thousand dollars; for the last year of this " Rump Congress" they have taken from the people $1,800,000. The United States have $2,500,000,000 of bonds out, held by foreign and home capitalists-one-sixth of the whole taxable property of the United States; yet those bloated bondholders pay no taxes to sustain the government, and every six months demand and receive their gold interest, and the prin- cipal in gold when the bonds shall fall due. The Radical party maintains that this is all right while the "Rump Congress" re- quires every other citizen of the United States to receive their debts and dues in legal tender notes. The United States have $350,000,000 of these bonds deposited to enable private individ- uals to bank and issue the "rags" as currency of the country, not


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drawing six per cent., the lawful interest, but more generally from twenty to twenty-five per cent. on the issues, while the gov- ernment pays to these banks the gold interest on these bonds. Why not take up these bonds by the issue of treasury notes which will not bear interest, affording a safe and reliable currency, and save to the government on that item of bonds $20,000,000 a year? $500,000,000 of our bonds are now redeemable at the op- tion of the government. Why not redeem them with United States treasury notes, thereby putting an end to the contraction of the currency and giving it an expansion necessary for the trade and prosperity of the country, and at the same time, from year to year, reduce this interest and exhaust this overwhelming debt ? We must come back to an honest and economical administration of the government, and, by wholesome and just laws, relieve the people from this onerous burden, revive trade and commerce, stop peculations, encourage industry, and give labor its just re- ward. The Radical party will never do this. They have too many favorites to provide for. They will never withdraw their peculations in the form of laws made upon the toiling millions. The rich must be made richer, and the poor poorer. The present policy of the Radical party, both in Congress and in State gov- ernments of the South, is the gradual confiscation of the remnant of property left by the desolations of war. The Southern people have lost their lives in battle. Widows and orphans and those who survived the war have been left with little remnants of property -- some without any. Their negroes have been emanci- pated without compensation ; their houses burned and farms des- olated. The Radical policy is to exhaust this remnant by confis- cation in the form of taxation, and rob the white man of his lib- erty and place him under negro supremacy. Gen. Grant says to this party, "Thy will, not mine, be done." The people of the North, at every family hearth, feel the burden of these onerous taxations and revenue exactions. As the South is weakened, the once profitable market of the North is worthless for their manu- factures, grains, implements of husbandry, horses, mules, and all their surplus products now being prostrated by this Radical rule. We are unable to give them the markets that advanced the pros- perity of each section. By loss of property, and our poverty, we are unable to contribute our fair territorial proportions to the fill-


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ing of the public coffers. It now falls with a crushing weight, which, as we are weakened, will increase upon the Northern States in raising this $590,000,000 per year levied upon the people. Furthermore, the Northern people must see that this negro supremacy, which by the bayonet is forced upon the South- ern States, is creating a despotism which is extending over the entire States. The "carpet-baggers" and "scalawags" combined with the negroes, aided by the bayonet, abolished the State gov- ernments of eleven States of the Union, and forced upon those States anti-republican laws disgraceful to free governments, which they detest and abhor. They, by disfranchising the worth and intelligence of the country, make the laws, tax the people, and force their policy upon the country. State governments are created by the bayonet. and if they exist and endure it must be by the bayonet. Not only has this great wrong been perpetrated upon the people of the South, but they are extending this despot- ism throughout the States. These negro governments elect the representatives in the Congress of the United States, and eleven States, by the vote of 4,000,000 of slaves, send twenty-two Sena- tors to the Senate who have the political power of Indiana, Illi- nois, Ohio, New York and Pennsylvania, or 20,000,000 of the white vote of the North, and through them dictate the policy of the general government, and through the Electoral College, will force upon the people a President of the United States in opposi- tion to the will of the majority of the people of the United States.


The negro supremacy growing out of this central despotism will become the ballance-wheel, the controlling and governing power, if radicalism is permanently fastened upon the country, destroying the constitution and crushing out the liberties of the people. No people ever had greater causes for a peaceful but effective revolution than now exists in these States. We begin to feel the great "ground-swell"-one that will greatly surpass that of 1840, because the causes now existing to arouse the people to an assertion of their rights and to rescue their governments from the Vandals' grasp are a hundred fold greater than theu. It was merely the extravagance in carrying on the government, and the few frauds and peculations upon the public treasury dur- ing Van Buren's administration that caused the people to arise en masse and move him from power. That administration ran


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the expenses up to $43,000,000 a year; now we have, in times of peace, au expenditure of $590,000,000, exclusive of the inter- est upon the public debt. In 1840 we had frauds and pecula- tions upon the public treasury in various instances; now it is re- duced almost to a system of private and public plunder. In 1840 the President's house was furnished with large mirrors, car- pets, divans, and ottomans, with Ogle's, not Butler's, stolen spoons. The people rose up wild with excitement and enthusi- asm-"Tippicanoe and Tyler too"-the hard-cider and Jog-cabin, with the coon thrown in-which did the work for Van Buren. That "ground-swell" was but an infant in comparison to the volcanic swell which moves the people in this campaign, as indi- cated by the great gathering of the people from every State and Congressional district in the United States on the fourth of July last, as indicated by the full approval of the platform of princi- ples announced to the country, and by the enthusiasm with which they are rallying round the standard of Seymour and Blair, the chosen representatives of the people in this great contest. Never were the people so fully aroused to the great enormities perpe- trated upon their liberties, and a fixed determination that their liberties shall be restored, and that the States shall have their equal rights, as the other States. Every city, town, and county, pours forth their thousands rallying to the flag of our party. Even the wires conveying the glad tidings from one extremity of the States to the other, catch the warmth and enthusiasm of the people, which is a harbinger of the glorious victory which awaits us in November next.


Why are the people so aroused ? It is because the Radical party, now in the possession of the Government, has trampled upou the constitution, disrupted the Union, and established a cen- tral despotism. The people are determined that their liberties shall not be thus lost; they rally as the great National Demo- cratic party, declared enemies of consolidation and central des- potism-the party of liberty and progress, of adherence to the rights of the States and citizens, as well as the just and constitu- tional powers of the Federal Government. It stands a. it did in 1798, under the guidance of Thomas Jefferson, adhering to a strict construction of the constitution, and the equal rights of the States. By their platform and previous history they have shown


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a fidelity to the constitution and the principles of civil liberty ; they assert the just principle of equal taxation of every species of property according to its real value, including government bonds and other public securities-one currency for the Govern- ment and the people, the laborer and the office-holder, the pro- ducer and the bond-holder. They are for making the military subordinate to the civil authority ; for the reduction of the army and navy to the legitimate wants of the Government; the Freed- man's Bureau, a corrupt machine to destroy the freedom and equality of elections, shall cease to exist; that frauds and pecu- lations of the Government shall be put down and punished; that there shall be a just and economical administration of the Gov- ernment ; that tyranny, peculations, and frauds shall not be en- couraged or permitted to exist in high places longer to afflict a down-trodden people, but honesty, talent, and virtue shall occupy official stations, and fidelity to the constitution and devotion to civil liberty shall alone be a passport to office and public station.


Noble Kentucky, who has miraculously escaped this disfran- chisement of her gallant citizens, who can speak as freemen at the ballot-box, has just spoken with a majority of upward of 70,000 against this radical despotism. So would her sister State, Tennessee, speak-born into the Union about the same time-if her gallant citizens on the day of election were not tied to " black- jacks" while the bummers, scalawags, and negroes do their voting.


The people of gallant Tennessee are in a more degraded and fallen condition, if possible, than the ten Southern States ex- cluded from the Union and governed by military satraps; or, if let into the Union, as some of them are now being admitted, with constitutions extorted from them with the bayonet at their throats, and laws made which they abhor and detest. Three times have the citizens of Tennessee been disfranchised, and as often has the machinery of despotism been amended and made more stringent. The first act after the election showed that these usurpers could pass no disfranchising law, however rigid, confin- ing it to the white population, that would secure to them the offices and public plunder. They tried that, failed, and amended it, and still the owls who occupied the places where once the eagles sat felt insecure. They could not agree to universal suf-


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frage including the black man, for still they knew that they would be driven from the roost which they were defiling. Their only security in holding the place was to disfranchise their own white race and enfranchise the negro. This great enormity has been perpetrated in the nineteenth century, which they still cling to with the tenacity with which they would hold fast to life itself. To give up power, with them, is like riving the soul and body; for well do they know, if the people could vote, that they would hear an order like that of Lady Macbeth to her guests: "Go, and stand not upon the order of your going, but go at once." Yet, if the people of Tennessee, cradled in the lap of liberty and tasted of its pleasures, become restive and complain of this despotism, and ask to be restored to their rights and liberties which they have never forfeited, the hooting of these "loil" owls is heard proclaiming that the people are rebellious, and the negro militia must be organized, armed, and put upon an op- pressed and outraged people. By the various acts of the Legis- lature the Governor has the appointment of the registers of voters, who have been made out of partisans, many of whom, while ex- ercising the power of granting certificates to vote, were them- selves candidates for office, for the Legislature, for clerkships, Sheriff, Trustee, etc., and the sole test of loyalty was, will the party vote the radical ticket and for the register granting the certificate-none other need apply. The power of appointment and removal was given the Governor as well as the extraordinary power of annulling the registration of counties, which, in some twenty counties, has been exercised, when the people cast their votes against radical despotism. The time-honored County Courts, composed of the counties since we became a State in 1796, who have levied the county and State taxes, provided for the poor, miniature republics representing the civil districts of their counties, establishing their roads, and controlling its municipal policy, have, by act of Assembly, been shorn of their power, and these great and important duties in the various counties have been given to three commissioners, partisans to the Governor, in some instances mixed with the negroes. I speak this in no dis- respect to the negro, for I regard him the best man of the three. The political power is not only given to our former slaves, the white man disfranchised, but the black man not only does the


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voting, but testifies in the courts against the white man, and sits on juries which pass upon the property, the liberty, and lives of the white race. How do you justify that, radicals of the North, while the whole race is disfranchised, when you will not let the negro vote, hold office, or sit on juries in your States, yet with the bayonet you force it on the down-trodden white race of the South? We have no objection to enfranchising the black man, but have to disfranchising the white man. . Thus out of a popu- lation of upward of 150,000, at least 100,000 have been disfran- chised. They have no representation, no voice in making the laws, yet taxed and made to meet the extraordinary expenditures growing out of corrupt legislation, in supporting sinecures in pec- ulations and a lavish expenditure of public money, including the heavy expenditure of supporting a negro militia, organized to plunder, to insult, and, in some instances, to murder the citizens, and in all elections to deter and drive from the polls all who are registered voters and opposed to radical despotism. The extra- ordinary exactions and taxations of the people of Tennessee, through the general and State Governments, are rapidly exhaust- ing the remnant of property left by the desolation of the war, and are nothing more than another form of confiscation, super- ceding old Thad's general system. Thus the most intelligent and worthy of our citizens have been ostracised and plundered by laws they have no voice in making, to feed and sustain a par- cel of non-resident adventurers and home radicals who have combined for office and spoils, using the deceived and deluded black man as a ladder by which to climb to office, and cudgels with which to bruise the head of the white men; and when they arrive at the top of the ladder they turn their backs upon the latter and look with contempt on the base means by which they have attained to power. And because the white men are restive and peaceably protest and complain of this great enormity, they are snubbed and proclaimed rebellious. The Governor, by procla- mation, convenes the Legislature for the ostensible purpose of putting the negro militia upon the war-path. In vain have up- ward of twelve Confederate Generals of Tennessee addressed the Legislature, guaranteeing the peace of the State, and protesting against the inauguration of war by calling out the militia. In vain have upward of fifty thousand of our citizens petitioned the


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Legislature to restore to them the rights of freemen; that the country is peaceful, and there is no necessity to call out the mili- tia, which must lead to bloody collisions and endanger the peace of the State. In vain did Judge Shackleford, a leading radical of this State, a former Judge of the Supreme Court, but now Chancellor of Nashville, head the people and present one of those memorials in an eloquent address at the bar of the Legislature, pleading for the restoration of the rights of the people. All these overtures have been rejected, and not even received with common courtesy, and the work of war and blood-shed still goes. on. By a vote of fifty-four to fourteen, the mere question of considering the proposition to restore to the people their rights,. was voted down, and the dogs of war are about to be let slip at the people. Still, the people of Tennessee are for peace, and are determined to submit to these unjust and unconstitutional laws until they can be abrogated by convention or other legal mode, and to do nothing on their part to justify this inauguration of war. Yet, tyrants should recognize the great truth that the peo- ple have the great natural right of self-defense, and if their lives. shall be imperiled, they will be defended. They are thus peace- able under the most tyrannical despotism that ever afflicted a brave people, because they know that the getting up of war in. Tennessee is designed by the radical party, and is regarded by them as a trump-card to be used in the North for the election of Gen. Grant; for they know that that nomination fell still-born 'upon the American people, and they know that if something is not done that radicalisin will die in November next. The intel- ligent and worthy citizens of the North, who appreciate civil liberty, must know this, and if radicalism shall bring about a war of races in Tennessee, instead of advancing their waning fortunes in the North, must finally overthrow it.




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