Southport Telegraph

Cass and Indiana

Lest there should be any doubt of the intentions of Gen. Cass in regard to the prohibition of slavery in the territories, the Washington Union of Tuesday answers for him in the following manner:

"Gen. Taylor evades any answer on the Wilmot Proviso. Gen. Cass has bravely and frankly defined his position in his Nicholson letter. He will veto the Wilmot Proviso."

Lest this should not seem sufficiently explicit, the Union in another article published on the same day makes the following authoritative declaration:

"At all events we are happy to understand by private letters that Gen. Cass stands firmly on the ground he has taken. Being applied to formally by a man or two of the Wilmot stamp, he declared unhesitatingly that he adhered to his Nicholson letter and to the Baltimore platform; and that if elected President, he would veto the Wilmot Proviso. Dare Gen. Taylor make such a declaration?"

This is Gen. Cass' southern face. Thus he appears, as shown in the looking glass kept by the administration at Washington. To the people of the north his friends exhibit him in another aspect. The following is what the Brooklyn Eagle, the main organ of the Cass party in this neighborhood, says of the passage which we have quoted from the Washington Union:

"Our friends should beware of these private letters and knowing hints given out in certain quarters to produce sectional results. Everybody, almost, has seen private letters from Gen. Taylor and Gen. Cass, sanctioning every shade of opinion to suit every section in the Union. We all know how much dependence to place on them just before an election. We do not doubt that Gen. Cass adheres to his Nicholson letter and to the Baltimore platform, but further than this we do not believe that he has gone. He is to be judged just as Gen. Taylor is to be judged, by his public opinions, sustained and countenanced by his public acts."

General Cass, it seems, takes refuge under the skirts of General Taylor. The best that his friends here can say for him, that on the question of slavery he is a little more explicit as the southern candidate. At the south it is confidently claimed that he will interpose his veto if Congress should pass a law prohibiting slavery in the territories; the Nicholson letter, they assert, fairly implies as much, and they affirm that he has sanctioned this interpretation in conversation. At the north, his friends only tell you that his Nicholson letter does not mean so much as the south would make it, and that if General Cass allows his opinions on this point to be a subject of conjecture, and asks the people to vote for him blindfold, so does General Taylor.

As we are now going on, it will soon come to be a necessary qualification for any candidate for the Presidency, that he shall have a set of opinions for every quarter in the Union, or at least shall be able to offer to any quarter of the Union a pretext upon which his supporters may hang a set of opinions to suit themselves. For our part we prefer the old fashioned way of supporting a candidate whose opinions are honestly and publicly declared, and in electing whom we incur no danger of being cheated.-[N. Y. Eve. Post.