Nashville Daily Patriot

TUESDAY, OCT. 28, 1856.
Presidential Election,
TUESDAY, NOV. 4th
Americans,
Vote and Work!!!

Another week of work, friends, and the great contest will be ended. Let the last week outstrip all others in vigor and effectiveness. We exhort you to be earnest, indefatigable and vigilant. Now is the time for real, telling work. Heretofore by argument, by document, and appeal you have sought to make impressions on the public sentiment, and have done so. The point to watch now is, that they are not effaced. Within the coming seven days recapitulate every thing which has been done, and press home to every voter in your district every consideration which can be urged in favor of your candidates, and against those of the opposition. The result of an important and warmly-contested election depends more upon the effort of the few days which immediately precede it, than all other things combined. A large proportion of voters are even then halting between two opinions. Perhaps this occasion finds a larger number than usual, of such men. A third candidate, and the false issues which the opposition have raised, have contributed to this. We find men, who are not accustomed to be in this category, at this late hour, holding themselves ready to be influenced by this suggestion and the other. The scales are trembling in the balance, and the lightest weight, yea "the estimation of a hair" will kick the beam. Never was there an emergency requiring more and prompter work. We cannot write a word that will arouse you to a juster appreciation of the vital importance of this election to the peace and welfare of the country. You have had this fact presented to you in every possible form and can but know that weal or woe will be the result. Nor will its consequences be temporary and repairable. There is reason to fear that it will materially affect the destiny of the nation for all time to come - to make, or to unmake it - to perfect and perpetuate this government, the fairest of man's handiworks, or to destroy and blot it out forever. If you know and feel that this is the stake, it is not necessary to enlarge upon it. No true American can be indifferent to such a question; to say that he is, is to call him traitor and villain. You belong to a party which is laboring to restrain the evil passions which predominate in both sections. It takes part with neither side, but condemning the policy which has set brethren by the ears, its aim is to take the control of the government from the party which has done the mischief, and inaugurate an administration upon broader and more national principles. It is your purpose neither to make the general government an instrument for the spread of slavery, and to provoke civil war in the effort: nor on the other hand to convert it into a system of injustice and intolerable oppression. The success of a party looking to either of these ends will, in the present excited state of the country, bring destruction, swift and sure, upon us. By an effort commensurate with the occasion you can prevent this result, and with this high and noble object you are called upon by a high sense of duty to exert yourselves. Then let every friend of Fillmore intermit for a week his avocation and give himself to his country. If he will consider it rightly it is time and means profitably invested. Our individual success and prosperity, and that of our children is wrapped up in that of the nation. A people who commit their public concerns to improvident and reckless managers will soon become bankrupt as a nation, and beneath the onus of a public debt, and the harassments of a sectional strife, trade will languish, the husbandman will cease to receive a return for his labor, business of all descriptions will droop, public and private confidence will depreciate, and the humblest and the highest will feel the blighting effect. We are all vitally interested in good government. It is a common remark and true that a man's private interests suffer by a meddling with politics. But this is a different state of case. Affairs have reached such a crisis, that another four years of misrule will irretrievably ruin us, and every peace-loving citizen is called upon to do his part to avert the evil. A week devoted to the success of the American ticket, will never injure any man, and will aid in the attainment of an object paramount to all other earthly ones, the restoration of the country to its days of primeval purity, the prostration of a foreign influence not contemplated by the fathers of the republic, and most baneful to its prosperity, and the rebuke of corruption and fraud. Who will not give a week of his time to such a cause? All hands! we entreat you to be up and doing, and prove yourselves worthy conservers of the inestimable treasure in your keeping, which is worth all the labor you may expend upon it, and is a full return for your vigilance and activity in guarding it. From this day forward to next Tuesday, let every American lay aside his individual interests and devote his whole time and energies to the success of the cause. Let the day know no care but the success of your ticket. Rise early to work for it, and let it be late when you lay down to rest from your labors. Your enemies are powerful and watchful. No advantage escapes them, and in their desperation they may resort to means which you should check. Employ yourselves in discovering their tricks, for former engagements show them apt at stratagem. If you have cause to suspect the legality of any vote intended to be cast against us, never rest till you satisfy yourselves, and expose it at all risks. A pure and uncontaminated ballot-box is the bulwark and the safeguard of our liberties. The suffrage is the baton of the American's power. In other countries the bludgeon and the poinard change rulers. Here it is the ballot. How important then that the ballot-box should be sacred and secure from corruption and pollution! The foreign horde which our enemies have allied themselves to, cannot understand and appreciate this thing, and have proved themselves too ready to be used to debauch it. Watch the foreign vote. Let every American judge of election have a copy of the election laws relative to citizens of foreign birth, and let them exact in every case an unconditional compliance with its strictest letter. Let them also be careful that papers declarative of an intention to become citizens, are not substituted for naturalization papers which last alone constitutes them citizens and permits them to vote. The penalty for illegal voting in this State is very severe, and we now warn all, that the authorities of the American party in this State have resolved to prosecute every individual against whom the charge is brought. We say then to our friends work from to-day till Tuesday next for a full vote, and on Tuesday for a pure ballot-box, and the day will be ours.