Alexandria Gazette

The "Free Soil" Movement.

In our judgment, the vilest and most disreputable instance of ingratitude which this country ever witnessed, was the conspiracy entered into against the South by Van Buren and his associates, without the shadow of principle upon which to base it, and without one solitary feeling or aspiration worthy of a statesman—and with no conceivable purpose, other than revenge and the gratification of a miserable personal hostility to a successful rival. That thousands and thousands of honest men in every portion of the north, were deceived by their pretence of devotion to Free Soil, we cheerfully admit: but that the leaders of that party had one solitary feeling in harmony with their professions, one single aspiration in behalf of liberty, one earthly desire to see the march of slavery arrested—is denied by their whole past lives. Their sole object was revenge and the punishment of the south for having repudiated them—their only aspiration for the future, a hope that by misleading an honest people and tampering with their natural hostility to human slavery, they might possibly get new access to those flesh-pots which had so long been their delight, and after which they longed as did the Israelites of old. Vile and heartless as are the schemings, and turnings, and twistings of the mere politician—degrading as are the political practices, the constant frauds and disgusting trickery of the man who knows no principle but party, no friend but his co-laborer in iniquity—he was and is a Prince, in comparison with the man who in addition to all this, recklessly seized upon a subject for the gratification of his revenge, the success of which necessarily involves, to a greater or less extent, the very existence of our glorious Union.

We are not, and never have been, the advocates of Slavery. We know it as it is, and would confine it where it is. But it is a part and parcel of our Union: it existed in nearly every State of this confederacy when that Union was formed: it had its rights then and it has them now: it was then a State Institution, and it is so now. it was recognized as such by our Constitution: and the great and good and pure men who framed that sacred instrument, and who knew alike the evils of Slavery and the blessings of Union, weighed one against the other: and determining that Union was all and all to us and to the cause of civil and religious liberty throughout the world, wisely and patriotically determined—that Union with Slavery was better than dis-union and independent confederacies with Slavery to boot. And they, therefore, determined, wisely and patriotically that it should be as it is—recognized and protected within the boundaries of the several States where it exists, and entitled to be represented in the Legislature and Executive Councils of the Nation With this knowledge staring them in the face, and practiced upon and acquiesced in by Van Buren and his co-laborers in iniquity—they had the hardihood to aim at the destruction of the Union itself, if necessary to accomplish their selfish designs: and with that view, organized a party, the avowed object of which was the non-extension of Slavery, but its real purpose, to array the North against the South, and thus to gain the support of honest men in the advancement of selfish personal schemes, at the hazard of a dismemberment of our Confederacy.—N. Y. Courier.