Secession Era Editorials Project

Republican Insincerity.

Cleveland, Ohio, Plain Dealer [Democratic]

(16 March 1857)

Since the demise of the late Republican Party on the fifth of November, a post mortem has revealed some of the principal causes of the the brevity of its life, which before was but partially known, for the depth of its corruption and canker sores could not be probed while the body was shrieking and struggling. The facts of history show that the body died through the corruption of its principal members. The life of the party will not be held in respectful, much less honored, remembrance like some other parties that have gone before it, through utter unworthiness of, and want of sincerity in many of its leading members. Its Kalloch's have been presented for great immoralities and debasing crimes. Its Mattesons and its Edmondses have been declared by resolutions of Congress guilty of corruption, and unworthy to represent even a Black Republican constituency on that floor. Greeley has dropped the mysterious thousand dollar draft and fled beyond the reach of the investigation.

Another malady has been found to exist in some of its members which has been, perhaps, the cause and basis of all the more flagrant and offensive of the external political carbuncles and excressences that have appeared on the body of the late deceased party, and that in the hypocrisy and insincerity of some of its most prominent and zealous advocates upon the pretended slavery and free soil issue, and the selfishness with which they have prosecuted their own private pecuniary interests and belied their pretended sentiments, after having with mock prayers on their lips besought the people for their votes, that thereby, though through weak and simple instrumentalities, slavery might be restricted and liberty extended. In proof of this want of sincerity we invite our free soil friends, who have for many years been chasing after, and worshiping at the shrine of a little bevy of Senators and Representatives in Washington, who have been bawling "God and Liberty" till they have forgotten the business and interests of their constituents and the State which they were commissioned to look after, to one instance of the hollow heartedness and want of sincerity to which we have alluded.

Our readers may possibly have heard of Dr. C. C. Chaffee, who represents the Springfield, Mass. District in Congress. He is known, if for no other reason, as being one of the "immortal seventeen" who, by his late vote declared the corrupt members of Congress worthy to hold a seat in that body. He is one of that class of men who two years since, as a matter of joke, received the nomination of a Know Nothing Lodge for a seat in Congress, and in the chaotic condition of public sentiment at that time, unexpectedly to every body, actually got into Congress.-- Last fall he took the Republican cue and begged and prayed for the cause of liberty, which he said was being fearlessly encroached upon by the slave power in Congress, and by the Administration, and said it was all important to the sacred cause of freedom that free soil Republicans, and particularly himself, should be sustained at the North, and be returned to Congress. And this Doctor Chaffee actually got credit for great legal sagacity in foreshadowing the future legal decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States, for he claimed that the members of that tribunal were, in their judgments and opinions, bondmen to Southern slave masters, for "that court," he said, "is soon to decide that slave holders may carry their slaves with impunity through the North." On account of all which he expressed the greatest indignation and alarm. Hypocrisy triumphed and he was re-elected as a pure and immaculate champion of liberty.

It now comes to be known that the case of Dred Scott and family, lately pending before the Supreme Court, whose decision remands Dred and his family to slavery, declares the Missouri Compromise unconstitutional, and establishes the right of transit of slave property over free territory without effecting its condition, was made in behalf of the wife and children of this preeminently freedom loving representative of the X Congressional District of Massachusetts.

It appears that some years since Dr. Emerson of Missouri, who was a surgeon in the U. S. Army, had occasion while on duty to take his family into Illinois, where he afterwards died, leaving his wife and an only daughter considerable slave property. Dr. Chaffee, being a widower, afterwards married the widow. The slaves claimed freedom and sought to enforce it by suit. The wife of Dr. Chaffee and her daughter were the heirs at law, and with their consent and on behalf of the estate, the administrator defended the suit. The decision confirms to this free soil hypocrite, by right of his wife, the body and blood of Dred Scott and his family and a retinue of other slaves of the same inheritance.

If there is a spark of sincerity in the hearts of the Black Republicans of that district, they should gather before the door of this man who has duped and deceived them and disgraced his whole constituency, by hundreds and by thousands, daily, from now till Congress meets again, if necessary, and make Springfield ring with their demands for his immediate resignation, and to bid him come down from that office which he has so much disgraced and which he obtained through false pretenses and affected sentiments. He should not be suffered to hide his head under the apron of his wife and say that he had no property or right of property involved therein, or part or lot in the matter, for by the laws of Massachusetts he is invested with, and is owner absolutely of the entire amount of his wife's personal property the very instant of their marriage, and by a single stroke of the Doctor's pen, he could have given freedom to Dred and his family, so far as any interest of his wife's was concerned, to say nothing of the influence he should be able to exercise for freedom, over the children of his own family, if possessed of the twentieth part of the talent by which that district was represented in the days of its Ashumns.