The Plymouth Weekly Democrat

SECRET ORDERS.

Two or three times a week do the abolitionists of our town assemble in secret conclave at Wester's Hall. None, now, who profess to be posted relative to the matter, have the unblushing effrontery to deny this fact.

These meetings have a fearful significance, and demand the attention of all good citizens. Why, after an order from the Commanding General of this Department, disapproving of and forbidding the assembling of secret political societies, do these, with impunity, persist in them?

What object have they to accomplish by these unworthy, unlawful, disgraceful and dangerous cabals? They are not laboring for the public good. No man fears to labor openly to accomplish a good end.

And the political hacks, demagogues, fools and knaves who constitute this infamous body, would stand upon the house tops in their labor were it a laudable enterprise to follow. Seldom do they ever engage in such a thing. If the object is for good why do they not throw open their doors and invite all good citizens to participate, that the greater good may come of it? Why do they meet like thieves and assassins, with barred and guarded doors—bound by obligations and unhallowed oaths to secrecy and fidelity to their unworthy purpose?

We believe these midnight, dark-lantern conspirators and plotters to be in possession of arms, procured unlawfully, and thus assemble for very bad purposes—purposes productive only of discord. We know their organization produces bad blood, distrust, and enmity—and this being true, no good citizens, who value the public welfare and peace, can enter into it; and no man belonging to it is entitled to respect as a law-abiding, peaceable citizen—no matter how deeply he may be draped in the folds of former respectability, or the hypocrite's cloak of Christianity.

In the name of the Democratic portion of our community, we protest against this secret order, and call upon Gen. Hascall to disband it.

As a partial defense for their course in this matter the abolitionists reiterate the exploded and silly lie that organizations of the K. G. C's. exist here—thus seeking to make two wrongs a right. But they know the charge is false, in their hearts they know it, every one of them; if they knew it to be true, as some profess, they are traitors that they do not have the members of the order arrested. Had we an assurance that the leaders of this secret abolition order should be punished for their complicity in the thing, upon a fair conviction, knowing their designs to be bad, we would instantly make the effort to procure them a hearing.

The leaders of this organization are making a bad record; a record that will last longer than the present war, that will cling to them long after they have ignored politics; when they would fain have it forgotten, buried deep in oblivion's blackest wings. They are "sowing the wind."

The deluded followers are doing themselves and their neighbors an injury—they are, perhaps unwittingly, striving to uproot our whole social organization. We pray them to pause and consider before they proceed farther in their course.