The following article from the Fort Wayne Daily Sentinel of
September, 1861, is now reprinted on account of its relation to
the subject discussed in the preceding pages, and as a further
exposition of the views of the writer upon the position of
parties in the last presidential election. The defeat of the
Breckinridge party, on the one hand, has led to its attempt in
the South, by armed rebellion to disintegrate the Republic,
because its Federal power could not be used to nationalize
slavery; the success of the Republican party, on the other
hand, has led to what the preceding and following arguments
foreshadowed as its result, the consolidation of a power in the
Federal government that is rapidly undermining the glorious
constitutional fabric erected by our fathers, and paving the
way for a central government, sustained not so much by the
free, unbought love of the people, as by the strength of its
military power to crush out resistance to its authority. The
times demand of every true lover of his country TO READ AND
THINK. "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty." Let not the
people be deceived! When the Federal government assumes the
power by military or other force to blot out the sovereignty of
Federal States, (a proposition already before the Federal
Congress), it strikes a blow at the life of American democracy,
which exists in the constitutional sovereignty of the States.
When that is slain, which God forbid! over its dead body,
surrounded by fields of carnage, after a perhaps brief reign of
ANARCHY, will rise an IMPERIAL MONARCHIAL POWER, of whose
dealings with _the people_ we have no better instructor than
the great teacher, "History," which is "philosophy teaching by
examples." Let us take heed!