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“A HOUSE DIVIDED,” &c.
While the Union, and other “National Democratic” organs keep up a steady fire upon the “traitors” and “factionists,” who follow the banner of Senator DOUGLAS, the papers in the interest of the latter, attack the Administration with great vehemence, and denounce it as faithless to its trust and recreant to its principles. Thus the Union, speaking for BUCHANAN & CO., says of the result in Illinois:
If the Democratic party has triumphed in Illinois, it has been at its own expense, in consideration of joining the Black Republican clamor against the “Lecompton fraud and swindle.” It is a triumph barren and ignominious; it is a triumph over which the Black Republicans have reason to exult, and do exult, more than the good and true Democracy. The platform of the party in Illinois, on the great slavery question, in the canvass just ended, differs but little from the Buffalo platform of 1848.
We repeat, that a victory, won upon a charge of fraud and delinquency of principle, against the Democracy – a victory won upon a platform of doctrines differing but a shade from the odious Platform of Buffalo – is not a victory over which we can rejoice, or from which we can expect any advantage or honor to the great party in whose service we labor.
On the other hand, the N. Y. Freeman’s Journal, a zealous Catholic and Democratic organ, thus retorts upon the Administration:
The rebuke of the late election is severe, but salutary. We are pleased that it has been measured out with a moderate hand. Our only desire has been that the true principles of the Democratic party should be vindicated and relieved from the contamination of the spurious and anti-republican vagaries of the present Executive. We have, for some time, ceased utterly to regard James Buchanan as a Democrat. He is a Federalist, to the heart’s core. He has betrayed his trust, or proved unequal to it, and has warred with an insane bitterness against the party which elevated him to office. Not only has he endeavored to rob the party of its dearest principles, but he has violated the fundamental theories of the Government in striking madly at the Representatives of the people; and with his bribes in Kansas, proffered to the constituency, and his rewards of office, bestowed upon recreant favorites, he has made an epoch which will not soon be forgotten, and ought never to be.
Mr. BUCHANAN was just the same “Federalist to his heart’s core,” when the Freeman’s Journal supported him for the Presidency, as he is now. His Executive career has conformed exactly to what the Republicans predicted. He has shown himself bitterly and consistently hostile to Freedom and the North, and has devoted all the energies, influence and patronage of the administration to promote the interests of Slavery, and the behests of the South. He has proved to be the most corrupt, the most extravagant, the most sectional and the most anti-Democratic President, that ever yet occupied the Executive Chair. The faults and follies of PIERCE, POLK, and TYLER are forgotten in the blunders and crimes of BUCHANAN. Bad as they were, he is infinitely worse. Surely such a quartette of Democratic Presidents out to prove an effectual and enduring warning to the people of the United States not to trust any more of the breed with the destinies of the Republic.
