Muscatine Weekly Journal

GREAT MASS MEETING!
GOV. GRIMES
4,000 FREEMEN IN COUNCIL
(BY DEMOCRATIC COUNTING.)

The greatest speech which we have heard during the campaign was delivered before a large concourse of people on Saturday night, by Gov. Grimes. We did not count the people present, but taking the Enquirer's reckoning of the Democratic meeting the other night as the basis of our calculation, we are safe in saying that, if there were 3,000 present then, there were at least 4,000 in attendance Saturday night. As this estimate is based on the Enquirer's figures, however, we will not swear to the exact number, as we are unwilling to venture our word upon so slender a foundation. We can say, however, with positive certainty, that the meeting was the largest that has been held in Muscatine this fall. Another feature in addition to numbers in which it differed from the Democratic meeting, was the fixed attention given to the speaker. Not an eye seemed to wander from his countenance, scarcely a syllable was uttered in all that large assemblage, except when some stirring sentence or patriotic sentiment awoke the thunders of applause from the voices of the people.

The speech was a powerful and masterly effort. We cannot do it justice by giving a synopsis of the argument, but we will allude to one or two points on which the speaker showed conclusively that the Democratic leaders are secretly arrayed against the wishes not only of the people of Iowa, but even of the mass of their own party, because the leaders of that party elsewhere, and especially the rich and influential capitalists engaged in cotton and sugar growing, are on the opposite side. These Democratic candidates and leaders in Iowa dare not come out boldly before the people in their platforms and their speeches on the banking and free-labor questions, because the lash of the cotton and sugar planter is lifted over their backs, and they know that if they move one step out of the furrow in which they are hoeing the cotton for their masters, the lash will quick as a flash curl over their hides.

Mr. Grimes showed that the Democratic leaders were responsible to the people for the present state of our currency. That party eleven years ago sent a body of men to Iowa City to frame the fundamental law for this State. In that constitution they inserted a clause peremptorily forbidding the people to establish banks of issue of any kind, thus throwing wide the door to the refuse and worthless paper of all other States and Territories, and leaving the people at the mercy of foreign corporations. To-day we are reaping the bitter fruits of such policy, while Ohio, with its sound and restricted system of banks, has to-day as sound a currency as in the most prosperous times. But with all this terrible injury before them, not a candidate, not a paper, not a word of their platform is pledged to give the people of Iowa what they need and demand-a safe and well guarded system of banks. And we point to the significant fact that the Enquirer has not to this late hour published a single line in favor of banks. Mr. Patterson, Mr. Alger and Mr. Hoch maintain the same ominous silence, and Mr. Samuels drily says that he is personally opposed to banks, but that if the people obstinately demand them, why, rather than make them angry, he will barely give his consent. Now, what does this mysterious silence of all the papers and candidates, and this reluctant half denied concession of Mr. Samuels, signify? Why, plainly, that the Democratic leaders are as bitterly as ever opposed to banks, but are afraid to meet the people on that issue.

In reading the opinion of the Supreme Bench in the Dred Scott case, Mr. Grimes showed with startling clearness the drift and meaning of that decision. The Supreme Court decided that under the Constitution a cotton-planter might hold his slave in any Territory of the United States, while it remained a Territory; that is, the people of a Territory must tolerate slavery in their midst whether they wished it or no. In the same decision Judge Daniels said that property in slaves was more sacred, and held by a higher guaranty under the Constitution than any other species of property; that it was the only property to which the high sanction of the Constitution was extended, and therefore, that if when a Territory came to form a Constitution, it forbade the existence of slavery, that Constitution would be in conflict with the Constitution of the United States, and so far null and void! It follows then, from the opinions of the Supreme Judges, that no new State can prohibit slavery if it previously existed in the Territory, and since under the same decision, slavery does exist in every Territory of the United States, it follows that no Free State can hereafter be formed out of that Territory, save where it is totally unsuited to slave labor. Such is the bearing of the Dred Scott decision. Free labor to be degraded by the presence of slave labor, wherever it is for the interest of the rich cotton and sugar-planter to take his slaves. The leaders of the Democratic party are in a dilemma. They hear the fierce mutterings of the people against the oppression and injustice on the one hand, but on the other hand they see the finger of the rich cotton-growers across the Ohio menacing them with excommunication if they dare to breathe a word against it, and as the crack of the lash tingles in their skins they bow and keep silence.

Will the people of Muscatine county support these cringing, servile leaders? We think not.