Weekly Standard

Mr. Pennington and Gov. Vance.
We copy to-day an article from the Progress from which it appears that some time since, Gov. Vance approached Mr. Pennington, and asked him to make the Progress his organ; and that after Mr. Pennington had sold one-fourth of the establishment to Mr. Richardson, the Governor approached him on the subject of buying the balance, and promised that in the event of the purchase, he, the Governor, would retain Mr. Pennington as foreman, and thus save him from conscription! What will the honest people of the State think of such conduct? The Governor wants an organ-that is, a newspaper to advocate his re-election; and finding he cannot influence the Editor to go for him, he offers to purchase the establishment, and as an inducement to the Editor to sell, he promises to protect him from conscription. Fellow citizens, these statements are true, and we lay them before you as a specimen of the political corruption now existing in your State administration.
Gov. Vance says in his speeches that he is a poor man. The Progress establishment is valued in gold at ten thousand dollars. Where did Gov. Vance expect to get seven thousand five hundred dollars in gold, with which to purchase the "balance" of the establishment? He admits in his public speech, as that he has sent off on the Advance, without authority of the Legislature, five bales of cotton and sold them to the Yankees; but this cotton did not fetch him more than one thousand dollars in gold. We repeat, where was the money to come from to purchase the Progress? Is there a Vance corruption fund in existence made up by those wealthy men who hold office under him, or who expect to hold office, to be used to carry the election and to keep him and his friends in power?
Finding he could neither influence Mr. Pennington nor buy him out, the Governor assailed him violently on the stump, and has descended so low as to take up and repeat one of Spelman's false statements about Mr. Pennington personally. But we need not dwell on this part of the picture. Mr. Pennington, in the very well written article which we copy from the Progress to day, has done the Governor the most entire justice.
We owe it to ourself and to our friends to take some notice of an allusion, made to us by Governor Vance in his speech on Monday last, but in doing so we shall endeavor to be entirely respectful to that gentleman.
Since the commencement of the publication of the Progress in this city our support of Gov. Vance's administration has been frank, cordial and unsolicited, and if we have enjoyed any favor, not common to other members the press, we are not aware of it. We were one of the first public men in the State to take a strong position for peace, and as early as last July urged negotiations looking to that end. We never attempted to justify the policy of the so called "peace meetings" held in many of the counties, but when those who participated in them were assailed as disloyal we defended them, believing then as we do now, that they were as sincerely devoted to the cause of the South as any one. Gov. Vance differed somewhat, at that time, with the views of the Progress and Standard, and when he made his Wilkesborough speech he took decided grounds against a Convention or other active measures looking to a speedy peace; and thinking that his position was different from and would not be satisfactory to the great mass of the Conservatives of the State that elected him, we frankly gave him our views, both before and after he made his speech at Wilkesborough. We never dreamed of any opposition to Gov. Vance until after that speech was made, and then we were anxious to have him so conform his views to those of his political friends as to prevent any such contest. But soon Mr. Holden, urged by friends from different parts of the State, announced himself a candidate, and as his views and our own harmonized on the great issue before the country, the war, we felt that as between him and any other man, we should be bound to vote for Mr. Holden. Gov. Vance now asked us if we could support him against Mr. Holden, and we frankly told him we could not: but that as we admired both, we should make no war on either. Nor have we.
We have criticised Gov. Vance's public record, to which neither he nor his friends can object, but in all we have said we have treated him with the greatest respect, personally.
We thought this due to his own good qualities as well as to the exalted position he occupies.
But all the Destructive papers came at once to the support of Gov. Vance, as well as their leaders throughout the State, some of whom have been constantly doing all they could to poison his mind against us and others who supported and defended him against their abuse two years ago. Gov. Vance told us that neither the Confederate or the Observer reflected his views, and that he must have an organ; and after we had sold one fourth of our establishment to Mr. Richardson, the Governor approached him on the subject of buying the balance, as some of his staff officers did us, and promised that in the event we sold we should be retained as foreman and thus saved from conscription. In compliance with the request of Gov. Vance, Mr. Richardson approached us on the subject, when we told him that there was not money enough in the Confederacy to buy the Progress for the purpose of turning it against Mr. Holden. Here the matter ended, and we see nothing very reprehensible in the course of Gov. Vance, but we only mention these things to show that he then thought us sufficiently respectable to conduct his organ, in case we could support him against Mr. Holden, or to be foreman of the office and secure his favor in saving us from the enrolling officer in case we should agree to sell. God knows we have never taken any pleasure in criticising even the Governor's political record, while personally we have not only not assailed him, but defended him on all occasions. Mr. Holden has a right to run for Governor, and we in common with other freemen of the State have the right to vote for him; and we shall be content, whatever the result may be, that the people have done right.
But this brings us to the unprovoked personal assault of the Governor. In his speech here on Monday, within a few miles of our birth place and the resting place of the bones of our ancestors for half a dozen generations, and in presence of many who have known us from childhood, his Excellency tried to degrade us by representing us as a pedler of lemonade in a circus. We acknowledge our humble origin and our poverty, and are not ashamed of our early struggles against adversity and rude fortune; but we have never appeared in the character which he represented, and the sneer is only a repetition of the slander of John Spelman, a creature whose brutal attacks upon Gov. Vance are remembered with loathing and disgust by all persons of refined sensibilities. But if we had been the lemonade pedler the Governor represented, and had spent part of our younger days crying out "Here's yer lemonade, only five cents a glass and two sticks of candy thrown in," as was given with all necessary stage effect by the distinguished gentlemen, the allusion would have been only the worse; for it is a sneer upon and fling at every aged man or ragged boy in the country who is peddling cakes, beer, pies or anything of the kind-to prevent wife, mother or sister from starving. We think that we have never spent a dollar that we had not acquired by our own exertions, and had the boyhood of the Governor been as dark, gloomy and adverse as ours was, we think it very possible he would never have obtained his present exalted position. The first money we ever made was at plowing for a gentleman of this county, at ten cents a day; and the gentleman who thus employed us heard the Governor's speech on Monday, and called to tell us of his supreme disgust for the allusion to us. He says he voted for him before, but would not now, even were there no other candidate in the field. We have a number of relatives in this county-people who are accounted respectable-and most of them voted for Gov. Vance two years ago, but we hardly think their admiration for him will be enhanced by his allusions to the poverty and early struggles of one of their kith and kin.
We have seen no one who approves the attack the Gov. error made on us, and when the matter is mentioned in the presence of his best friends they can only hang their heads. Some of those who surrounded him applauded the exhibition, but they were persons who only use him for the place he holds and the patronage he has to bestow, and who have done more than everybody else to withdraw the affections of the people from him. These exclusives know that "cotton is king," because they have the evidence in their larders and store-rooms, which are well filled with the luxuries of the European and Yankee markets. We could unfrock many of these and lay bare some horrible ulcerations, but such is not the legitimate mission of the press, and we forbear, though our wrongs would at least plead for such a course.
One other point and we have done. The allusions made by the Governor to our behavior at the fall of Newbern were incorrect. We do not know who misled him, but his statement does us gross injustice; and when our friends and ourself were defending him against the malicious slanders of his enemies in reference to the same occasion, we little dreamed he would ever be guilty of the same injustice to us. The Governor's bearing on that occasion, as on all other occasions while he was in the field, was heroic and gallant, and it is strange that he should now embrace so fondly those who have tried to blast his reputation by stating otherwise.
When the enemy appeared at Newbern we were prostrated on a bed of sickness with a protracted fever, contracted on Neuse river, and had been under treatment for weeks; but we got up, and though possessing scarcely physical strength enough to keep on foot any length of time, we shared part of the dangers of that unfortunate reverse, and whoever states that we evaded any duty, responsibility or danger asserts that which is untrue. We were among the last to leave Newbern and hardly had strength to reach the depot, where we were fortunate enough to get on one of the last trains that left. It is well known that we were down for many weeks after the fall of the town, and that our illness was considered by able physicians as serious and alarming; and our resignation was finally tendered because army surgeons would not consent for us to report to our company for duty. We should not have noticed these matters had they emanated from any ordinary source, but coming from the Governor of the State we could not have said less in our own defence than we have. We have no particular passion for blood, we confess, but we think we know several gentlemen who are as averse to swallowing jack-knives as we are.
We learn that after Gov. Vance had pitched into Holden and ourself to his satisfaction he assured his audience that he should not allude to either of us, personally, again. This is kind, but it would have been far better for him had he never done so at all. His assault on us was unprovoked and unnecessary, and he is welcome to all the capital he can make out of our early poverty or our humble employments. We were considered a marvellous proper personage by the Governor and those who revel in the sunshine of his favor, as long as we supported him, but when we felt it to be our duty to take sides against him, as between himself and Mr. Holden, we at once lost caste in the charmed circle. We thank God that we have been able, against all the reverses of fortune to reach our present position. Though humble we are content with it.