The Vindicator, January 6, 1860, p. 2, c. 4
At a meeting held in the village of Mt. Solon, in Augusta county, Va., on the 15th of December, 1859:
On motion, Dr. James T. Clarke was called to the Chair and Geo. M. Miller appointed Secretary.
The object of the meeting being briefly explained, the following preamble and resolutions were submitted by Mr. Jno. A. Garrett and unanimously adopted by those assembled:
WHERAS, the North, by repeated acts of aggression, contumely and oppression exercised towards us, but more particularly by the late unparalleled outrage enacted at Harper's Ferry by a murderous band of their fanatical emissaries, has at length aroused us to a sense of the great wrong and injury we are constantly sustaining at their hands; therefore,
Resolved, That mindful of former offenses, and in view of further aggression upon the rights and liberties of the South, it is the duty of every community to prepare to defend themselves, their families, and their firesides, from similar invasions or further insult, in any way, shape or form, at the hands of the North.
Resolved, That we, citizens of Mt. Solon, do forthwith proceed to organize a volunteer company, to be called the ----------, to be composed of members over the age of 17 years and under 50 years.
Resolved, That we petition to the Governor of this Commonwealth to provide us with the necessary arms and accoutrements to equip said company, as soon as we shall have obtained the requisite complement of members.
Resolved, That we view the late foray at Harper's Ferry, and its subsequent developments, with unfeigned astonishment and the deepest indignation. That the infamous treachery and ingratitude of the North has been fully revealed, and it is full time that the South should manifest its displeasure in some spirited and practical manner.
Resolved, That we heartily co-operate with the seal and enthusiasm manifested by the different companies formed in this and other counties since the late outrage, and most cordially commend the independent, vigilant and fearless course pursued by our spirited and patriotic Governor towards its perpetrators, their aiders, advisers and abettors.
Resolved, That D. N. Van Lear, Geo. M. Miller and Jno. A. Garrett be and are hereby appointed a Committee to obtain names of persons who wish to become members of this company, and to draft the necessary Constitution and By-Laws for the government of the same.
Resolved, That the Secretary transmit a copy of these proceedings to the Staunton papers for publication.
(Signed,)
GEO. M. MILLER, Sec'y.
The Vindicator, January 13, 1860, p. 2, c. 1
We like it much. It has the sweet savour of the cargo of tea that was thrown overboard in other days. Let Massachusetts remember that tea, and tremble at the homespun movement. The same spirit that animated her Southern sisters then, and brought their chivalry to her side, to avenge the injustice of a foreign tyrant, animates them now, and enables them to dare and suffer everything in defense of their Constitutional rights--their honor, and sovereign equality.
We like it too, because it enables us to fight the battles of the Constitution within the Union, in the most effective manner, and by the use of the most simple machinery.--Without arms, without even legal enactments, let every Southern man, woman and child exercise their undoubted right to determine with whom they will deal. Let them resolve each for himself that not one cent shall go from the South into the services of the Aid Societies, Underground Railroads, and Freedom Shriekers of the North, either through the merchant princes, manufacturers, institutions of learning, yankee book-sellers, yankee teachers, yankee pedlars, or any other channel. By such a policy, the Union will be perpetuated, and the immense resources of the South built up.--By such a policy alone can the conservatism of the Northern States be aroused into action, and the reign of their demagogues be terminated. Governor Wire has well said that the spirit of Northern conservatism is "passive," and has remained so, until it is rendered powerless for good. Let them be made to feel that a cheerful obedience to the compacts of the Constitution is necessary for their preservation, as well as for ours. Let their distinguished men, such as Millard Fillmore, lay down their maudlin sensibilities, and be taught that the great character of our liberty and Union is not so abhorrent to the laws of God and of Justice, as to make it "a painful duty" for modern philanthropists to carry out its provisions, in obedience to their solemn oaths. This is the sentiment among many Northern men, who call themselves conservative, which feeds abolitionism. It must be corrected before fraternity can exist between the North and the South; and while the two great and only objects of government are the protection of persons and property, Northern men must know that the most valuable property of the South is as sacred and as much entitled to protection as any other. They are greatly in the dark at this time on this subject, and can only be enlightened by a pressure on their pocket nerve. We say, then, success to the homespun movement.
The Vindicator, January 13, 1860, p. 2 , c. 1
We are pleased to observe a disposition on the part of the Volunteer Companies forming throughout the State, to adopt for their uniform goods of our own manufacture. One of the Lynchburg companies was supplied a few days since with some three hundred yards of beautiful cadet mixture, from the Staunton Factory, and we learn that a number of other orders have been received. By the way, we hazard nothing in saying that the goods manufactured at the Staunton Factory, will compare favorably either in quality or appearance with any other establishment of the kind.
The Vindicator, January 20, 1860, p. 1, c. 7
From the New York Herald
We are compelled to continue the sad record of the terrible calamity at Lawrence Mass. where, through the penny wise and pound foolish meanness of a soulless corporation, nearly two hundred operatives lost their lives and another hundred or more are maimed for the remainder of their days.
There are some shocking accidents--such as fire at sea and shipwrecks--the results of which, however painful they may be, can only be regretted. Human foresight in many of those cases could neither have prevented their occurrence at the time nor have provided against the possibility of their repetition. This Lawrence murder is not one of those cases wherein we say that men and women died by visitation of God, or through the workings of some inscrutable dispensation of divine providence. That there will not be wanting in Massachusetts people, perhaps journalists and persons to take such ground, we can readily imagine; it will be as sheer blasphemy as if it were pleaded as an excuse by a wretch who came into court with his hands died in the blood of his brother.
Let us examine the case. In the centre of a large manufacturing town there has been erected a building to be used as a manufactory, to be filled with ponderous machinery, and to be occupied during ten hours in each working day by eight hundred men and women. It is found, after the erection of the building, that it is not safe, and it is patched up with iron plates, as if they could insure the stability of a structure which was doubtless insecure from its foundation to its roof trees. The corporation makes itself secure against pecuniary loss by full insurance. The spindles are in motion, the busy fingers of the white slaves guide the magic thread whereon hang fat dividends. The President and Directors doze over their after dinner wine, its ruby color deepened with the blood of the operative. The manufactory may fall to pieces, or may be burned down. No matter. It is insured--fully insured--in good offices. Another glass of wine. And the director enjoys his port, as fine old Boston gentlemen have done before him for many a day gone by, and will for many a day to come. He has dropped into a gentle slumber, and is dreaming of two per cent per month, when their comes a crash, a shriek, a death wail. Two hundred young men and women have been crushed and burned to death since that fine old Boston gentleman ate his last almond. But he is insured. Where is the insurance for the kindred of the slain? Where the recompense for the bereaved father and hear broken mothers, and weeping sisters, and agonizing brothers, who stand over the mangles and charred remains of their kindred? Who shall pay the premium that will be demanded from the fine old Boston gentleman at the last great account--that day when the books of the rich and poor, the high and low, Dives and Lazarus, the beggar and the king, shall be squarely and evenly balanced with the golden rule? - What company will insure the fine old Boston gentleman against that risk? Not we.
But they are philanthropists, these corporators of Lawrence. Very likely they give a great deal to home and foreign missions. Without doubt they sincerely sympathize with the negro who picks, in Alabama, the cotton which their slaves weave at Lawrence. They will give money to help that cotton picker to rise and murder his master, and to make up for that expense will put the screws tighter to the cotton weaver, who is--God save the mark!--a free laborer--free as the galley slave who clanks his chains at Brester Toulou; free as the British soldier who faints under the burning sun of India--free to labor many hours at scanty pay in an insecure building, and free to be crushed to death at last! That is free white labor from a State street point of view
Here we may be met with the old plea that the gentlemanly vice of avarice can only be curbed by legislative enactments. Well, we have a government--a federal and a State government--an extensive and costly machine, which we work, or which works us, at any expense of many millions per annum. Every year we have as many as two or three thousand new laws about one thing and another. But the moment that any act is proposed to provide against the occurrence of such massacres as that at Lawrence, capital comes in, buys Legislatures like so much merchandise; and there's the end of all. We need not go to Lawrence to see examples of this. The Greeks are at our own doors. There are hundreds of insecure building in New York, and a very large number of unsafe steam boilers hissing beneath the feet of our citizens as they pursue their daily avocations. In the matter of the boilers, the Common Council, we believe has passed an ordinance appointing an Inspector, but the man has not yet been selected, and probable (sic) will not be until after the next explosion.
It will be seen that all these dangers to which we have alluded menace more particularly the laboring classes, who are generally unfriended, living from hand to mouth and fighting the battle of life upon empty stomachs. Truly, they have the civil law to resort to. The law is open to everybody and so is the Fifth Avenue Hotel. Perhaps a bereaved father or mother might succeed in an action against the proprietors of the Pemberton Mills; but who would go security for the costs preliminary to the result? What poor devil can fight a wealthy corporation? The operative looks, then, to the journalist as his only friend--And the journalist should accept cheerfully the championship thus thrown upon him. The press should unite to demand that special laws, as in the case of railways, should be enacted for the insurance of the operatives as well as of the building wherein they labor. The law should declare in the simplest way, that proprietors of building used as manufactories must guarantee their employees against such accidents as that at Lawrence. Further, that if such building falls, the fact is prima facie evidence of culpability on the part of the owners, and legal proceedings for the relief of the sufferers should be commenced in the names of the State, and at its expense. We employ a District Attorney to bring to justice the man who takes away the life of one other, while the slaughterer of hundreds goes to his bed of down unpunished, sleep well...and "little cupids dropping on his urn their marble tears."
The Vindicator, January 20, 1860, p. 2, c. 2
By an inadvertency of the editor, the object of this meeting was misstated in the last Vindicator. It is for the purpose of appointing delegates to the State Convention, which meets in Richmond on the 16th of February--and to the District Convention, which nominates delegates to the Charleston Convention.
We consider this an appropriate time to address a few words to the Democracy of the country in reference to the duty which they will have to perform in their primary meeting. You have, Democrat of August, to send delegates to a Convention which is to plank out the platform of principles upon which the Democracy of Virginia are to stand during the coming canvass, and which is to guide the Virginia delegation in the Charleston Convention. This, fellow-Democrats, is a grave duty at all times, and one, we blush to say, too seldom appreciated by the masses of the party; but at present it will become your duty, in connection with the Democracy of the Union, to decide issues which rise high above the questions which ordinarily engage the attention of parties and politicians.
There is one question which has enchained the attention of the nation for the last six or twelve months, to which we would particularly call the attention of the Democracy of Augusta, to wit: Shall or shall not the slaveholders of the South who go into the common territories of the Union be protected in their property as the Federal Constitution provides?
Compromisers and the advocates of squatter sovereignty may argue, and mistify, and denounce this question as an abstraction, as much as they please; but, in our opinion, it is the practical , and the only practical form into which the slavery question has resolved itself. Seward may again and again promulgate his brutal "irrepressible conflict" theory; orators by hundreds of the Wendell Phillips school may continue to preach treason and infidelity to the besotted fanatics of New England; scores of John Browns may attempt the invasion of the South, only to swing appropriately from the gallows, but so long as we retain that jewel, protection for our slave property in the Territories, the institution of slavery will remain as firm and immovable as the everlasting hills. Take this sacred constitutional right from us and slavery in the Union is a condemned and doomed institution. Gov. Wise luminously says that the anti-protection theory "is a short cut to all the ends of Abolitionism," and it is our deliberate opinion, after close examination of the subject, that of all the expedients of abolition ingenuity, Squatter Sovereignty aims the truest and deadliest blow at the institution of slavery.
Thinking thus, we feel it to be our duty to invoke the earnest attention of the Democracy to this question. We entreat them to come up, one and all, to the primary meetings, with their minds fully made up, and their ideas thoroughly arranged on the questions of the day, resolved not to be senseless automatons in the hands of politiciads (sic). Above all, know well the views of the delegates whom you send to the Convention, and scrutinize closely the resolutions offered.
The Vindicator, January 27, 1860, p. 2, c. 3
There is an extraordinary revival now progressing among our Methodist friends under the direction of their zealous and devoted pastor, Rev. G. G. Brooke. About forty-five have made a profession of religion and a large number are presenting themselves as "anxious enquirers." This revival influence has pervaded the Wesleyan Institute to such an extent that we learn there are now only two or three in the Institute who are not professors of religion.