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Douglas at the South.
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Thursday, September 9, 1858.
We clip the two following articles from the Sherman (Texas) Patriot, as a specimen of what the Southern press consider Judge Douglas:
"Endowed with sufficient capability to accomplish any achievement, he presents a never to be forgotten instance of the ever to be remembered fact – which cannot be too strongly impressed upon the minds, nor to be too deeply engraven upon the hearts of public men – that talents, without virtue are abilities without merit, and that a statesman with principles, is a politician without scrubles. Though admired for his talents by the present generation, he will be remembered by posterity only for his imbecility. His own folly has ignominously hurled him from the disgraced eminence to which he was absurdly lifted by the folly of the people. With unexampled facility he seeks to destroy the Democratic party for his own agrandisement, just as some years ago, he voted for annexing Texas in order to weaken the South. Maddened by ambition, he hates his friends and loves his enemies; deserts the triumphant Democracy, which possess both the power and the will to place him in the highest office upon the earth, and joins the defeated cohorts of the Black Republicans, who would not make him President if they could. Having betrayed the North with the vain hope of gaining the South, he now betrays the South with the equally vain hope of gaining the North. The North with its usual puerility, hung him in effegy; we trust that the South, if she catches him, will hang him in earnest, and we claim for Kentucky the honor of furnishing the rope. Born a pauper and bread a mechanic, he aspired to the dictator of America, and began to fancy himself clothed with the purple of empire, and wielding the baton of boundless power; but, happily for the country, he has found to his cost, that the gentry of the South will not tamely submit to the rod of a Yankee school-master.
Pretending to be a Democrat, he votes with Know Nothings; pretending to be a National man, he votes with Black Republicans, pretending to be in favor of popular sovereignty, he arrogantly resists the well known wishes of the President, who is the sole representative, the legal embodiment, the constitutional exponent and inflexible index of the sovereign will of the entire people of the United States, and especially of the South.
The slyest hypocrite and the most unblushing offender; the most vacillating politician and the shallowest schemer; the boldest conspirator and most cowardly
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traitor; the most artful demagogue and most transparent humbug that breaths the breath of life, reckless of the future as he is regardless of the past; boldly attempting anything and achieving nothing; basely cringing to a vulgar populace, and insolently defying a patriotic President; treacherous to both sections of the country, and trusted by neither; scorned by all parties and feared by none, he stands powerless, helpless and dispised, like an extinct volcano, which in a vain effort to plow up the world, has exhausted its infernal powers upon the careless, circumambient air.He is a traitor in the dark and a traitor in the light; a traitor in his heart and a traitor in his head; a traitor in Congress and a traitor out of Congress; and if there is any other time and say other place, and any other way for him to not the traitor, he will then and there, and thereby, prove himself a never to be forgotten and ever to be remembered, infernal, doubledyed, trebly damed traitor!