Hurrah for the Nullifiers!- Everybody knows, for everybody reads the True Delta, that we never upon any occasion committed the unpardonable crime of confounding honest, conscientious and sincere disunionists with the factious, grub-hunting pack of politicians who united with them to put poor, soft-pated, gullible John C. Breckinridge on the Presidential track. We had as lief think of comparing the arch-angle Gabriel to Beelzebub, as a Rhett or Keitt to a Slidell, a Bright, a Bigler, a Gwin, or any other precious specimen of your hybrid, calculating, jobbing politician. Indeed, if there ever was any matter in which we took particular and especial pains to be understood by our readers, it was manifest in an extreme solicitude not to be misinterpreted in this. While, then, it would seem to matter little in reality, and in the maintenance of our Union principles, whether the Disunionist be a sham or a reality, if the miserable imitator be capable of the same mischief as the genuine specimen, nevertheless we see a great difference between the man who is conscientious and truthful in his intention and belief, diabolical though they be, and the miserable calculating, hypocritical schemer who takes up treason as he does the profession of a party creed, solely to turn it to sordid and nefarious account. Therefore, as long as Yanceyism was frank, open and bold-faced, we had respect for its authors and its dupes, but when it descended to an alliance with all the filth, scum and venality of faction we are not to be blamed if we judged of the mass by the filthy material wherewith it was leavened. We can understand clearly enough the high-minded (if mistaken) Carolinian when he denounces all interference by his noble State in the affairs of a party or a Union he detests and would destroy; but our respect for him is greatly diluted when we see him commingling in the wallow of conventions and combinations with the lowest, meanest and most unscrupulous of mankind, between whom and himself it is impossible there can exist sympathies in common.
Among the more extravagant of the Disunionist of South Carolina, of to-day, appears Mr. James L. Orr, a gentleman who not long since seemed to us as pure a specimen of your calculating, water-carrying- on both shoulders- conciliatory, dough faced politicians as one could meet with even in these times. He was then a National Democrat of no North no South proclivities, was a member of Congress and an aspirant for the Speaker-ship, which he obtained, and the Presidency, which he will not very soon reach- in our opinion. Mr. Orr had managed to impress many of the ablest and best men in the Democratic Party, with ideas of his high mindedness, impartiality and independence which his two years of the Speakership very grievously dissipated. Once in that position he became the plastic instrument of Executive dictation, and we venture to declare that neither before his time or since has any man ever filled the office less to the satisfaction of the honorable components of the party to which he was indebted for the honor. But let that pass. He is now a rampant nullifier. We believe there is a United States senatorship vacant in South Carolina, and this may not be without its influence upon his and other men’s opinions about this time; but if the legislature of our sister State should, at its next session fill the place, we fervently hope it will be by a man worthy of her past fame and who is sound, reliable and consistent upon the record.
We have said Mr. Orr is now a secessionist or nullifier of the white-heat order. He out Herod’s Herod; Rhett, Keitt and other consistent men cannot hold a candle to him; he is for open declared war should Lincoln be elected president, and of course, he goes it powerfully for Breckinridge. He is not foolish enough to dream that Breck. Has a ghost of a chance for election, nor is he like the Slidells, Brights, Biglers, Inversons, and Davises, who pretend to believe that humbug; but he is clear that Breck. Is a good enough Morgan until after the election, and is just the candidate to destroy the party which has done so much for him, and never received anything but ingratitude and rebellion in return for it. That we are doing Mr. Orr no injustice in what we are here inditing we shall satisfy our readers, by the publication of the following manifesto from his pen:
[From the Anderson (S.C.) Gazette.]
Gentlemen: I have read and carefully considered your appeal to me to become a candidate for the Legislature in this district. The steadfast and cordial support you gave me throughout my public career of sixteen years, renders it painful for me to decline any position which you desire me to occupy, and yet private considerations of too great weight to be disregarded, impel me reluctantly to decline your call.
I am, like yourselves, deeply impressed with the critical aspect of our Federal affairs, and believe we are drifting rapidly upon revolution. My hope, as you know, for years past, for the preservation of the rights of the South in the Union, has been upon the Democratic party. So long as it was united, harmonious and triumphant, our rights and institutions were safe. That great party that has, in times gone by, won so many brilliant victories over Federalism, Abolitionism, and consolidation, and established so many sound and conservative principles, is now disunited, divided and broken up.
Its disruption extinguishes my ardently cherished hope of preserving not only our rights, but the Union itself. It is idle to debate or review the cause that led to its disruption.
Let it suffice here for me to say, that, in my opinion, the secession of the Southern delegates at the Charleston convention was unwise and impolitic. It was manifest there, to the most casual observer, that Judge Douglas, who was so justly obnoxious to the South, could not receive the nomination in a full convention, and it was equally certain that Mr. Breckinridge would have been the nominee, if the Southern delegations had not abandoned their posts. If Mr. Breckinridge had been the nominee at Charleston, his election would have been a certainty. He is now the nominee of only one wing of the party, the wing having nominated Douglas- and whilst I shall give to Breckinridge and Lane, the nominees of the Baltimore convention- gentlemen of tried and cordial support, I see no prospecs of their election, either by the people or otherwise.
Lincoln and Hamlin, the Black Republican nominees , will be elected in November next, and the South must then decide the great question whether they will submit to the domination of Black Republican rule- the fundamental principle of their organization being an open, undisguised and declared war upon our social institutions. I believe that the honor and safety of the south, in that contingency, will require the prompt secession of the slaveholding States from the Union, and failing then to obtain form the free States additional and higher guarantees for the protection of our rights and property, that the seceding States should proceed to establish a new government. But whilst I think such would be the imperative duty of the South, I should emphatically reprobate and repudiate any scheme having for its object the separate secession of South Carolina; if Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi alone, giving us a portion of the Atlantic and Gulf coasts, would unite with this State in a common secession upon the election of a Black Republican, I would give my assent to the policy.
I would indulge in no language of crimination or denunciation of our brethren in the South, who are impelled, by a sense of patriotic duty, to support Douglas and Johnson. I believe they are misjudging the most efficient means of preserving the rights and interests of the South in sustaining these gentlemen, but I concede to them a patriotism as catholic as I claim for myself, and I feel well assured that when the great sectional issue between the North and the South is to be decided- an issue which words alone will not settle- that the South will have need for the services of all her sons, and that Breckinridge men and Douglas men will only emulate each other in their gallant devotion to her honor and interests.
Thanking you gentlemen, for your kind consideration, and reiterating my regret that I cannot respond affirmatively to your call, I subscribe myself, most truly your friend and fellow-citizen.
James L. Orr.
To John Martin, and others.
He knows, he very frankly says; that Breckinridge cannot be elected, and he leaves it to be inferred that his running must elect Lincoln; nevertheless he candidly confesses that all this was brought about by the conspirators of the Charleston Convention, who knew they could defeat Douglas’ nomination, if that had been their sole intention; but the hope of disunion being consummated in the contingency of the election of an abolitionist had so possessed their minds that, cost what it might to the nation, they were resolved it should occur. This is the true solution of the secession of the nullifiers and the rotten schemers who united with them at Charleston, and Mr. Orr has honestly confessed it. It was not a change in the platform; it was not personal dislike of, or political opposition to, Stephen A. Douglas, the truest, the ablest, the wisest, and safest friend the South has ever had in the councils of the Republic; it was not reasonable or unreasonable repugnance to the Cincinnati platform that determined the nullifiers and their ignoble auxiliaries to secede at Charleston, and attempt to destroy the National Democratic party; it was truly, as Mr. ex-Speaker Orr ingenuously admits, with the intention of indirectly electing an abolitionist, so that the issue of Union or Disunion might be presented to the South in a form its people could not hesitate to accept, in the manner these men had arranged and hoped.
Mr. Orr says that, had Breckinridge been nominated at Charleston, his election would have been a certainty; but he abstains from stating, at the same time, what no one better knows than himself, that it never was the purpose of the seceders to have nominated him; that he was, if possible, more objectionable personally to Buchanan, Slidell, Cushing, and all that miserable tribe, than Douglas himself; that, in truth, his nomination was made by men who aimed at his, Breckinridge’s political annihilation, almost with the same eagerness they sought to destroy the lion-hearted statesman of the West. And in pursuance of their object can any true friend of Mr. Breckinridge doubt their complete success? Is not the evidence furnished in the published letters of all the conspirators, and does not Mr. Orr distinctly although not directly admit it? No, these conspirators well knew that the presidency was a sure thing for Breckinridge after Douglas; no power they could wield could prevent it; but the unholy haste of the gentleman to reach the top of the ladder when he should have been contented with a lower rung blinded him to the dishonesty of the influences that were combined for his destruction.
Can any true American who is devoted to the Union, and belongs to or reverences the great conservative Democratic party, by whom it is faithfully sustained, read the publications made by such prominent men as Mr. Orr, and other admissions without perceiving clearly that the only object in breaking up the Democratic organization was to elect an abolitionist and thus, if at all possible, force the Southern people into open rebellion to the integrity of the Republic?
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Crop failures-
Mississippi- Peas, potato and the cotton crops are perfect failures.
Georgia- The Early County News says the failure of the corn crop will render it impossible for that county to bread itself, and suggests the idea of chartering a boat in Pittsburg or some other point in the West, to bring around as much as the country may require.
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New York- “There seems to be doubt that a commercial reaction has set in. Even the ruined railroads are picking up, while the mines, like the fields, are producing large yields. Happy is he who has a good freight-vessel to ride the advancing wave of prosperity.”
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“Old Ironsides” got a little scratching at Annapolis. On entering the harbor she ran aground, and had not got off when our correspondent closed his letter on Thursday. He thinks she in not seriously injured, however.
The sailors of the the new steam sloop Pawnee, at Philidelphia, are to be transferred to the Powhatan, for the service in the Gulf of Mexico. A small draft from the North Carolina left here on Saturday, to complete the ship’s company of the latter.
The screw steamer Mohawk, of the home fleet, was to arrive at Pensacola on Friday, from Matanzas, which port she left on the 18th…
The sloop-of-war Preble will be due at Boston tomorrow.
The steam sloop Richmond has “passed inspection” at Norfolk….
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Selling Liquor to Slaves.- Mrs. Collins, who keeps a grocery at the corner of Liberty street and the New Canal Shell road, was yesterday tried and fined $250 for selling liquor to a slave.
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A Steam Carriage- The Earl of Caithress has built a carriage which is to be propelled by steam power upon ordinary turnpike roads.
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Vessel Struck By Lightning- The Pensacola Observer of Tuesday last says:
The schooner Louise, of New York, just on the eve of leaving our port for Texas, was struck by lightning during a thunder squall on Sunday last. The lightning struck the foremast and topmast, the fluid running down and scattering over the vessel doing considerable damage. Captain Hallock and other onboard were knocked down by the concussion, but not seriously hurt. The vessel will be detained to undergo repairs.
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David Upton