Vermont Watchman And State Journal

Locofocoism and Free Soil.

We commend the following just and forcible remarks on "Free Democracy," from the Daily Free Press, to the careful attention of every one of our readers. The time has come when the sincere opponents of Slavery Extension must decide to whom this great interest may be most safely trusted—and to which of the two great parties, as judged by their past acts, they can most consistently and honestly adhere. In this view, the following considerations cannot be too carefully weighed:

Had Northern "Democrats" -men born in an atmosphere of Freedom, and nurtured where hostility to human Slavery is a birthright—had they proved as true to Freedom and Humanity as Southern Whigs did in that great controversy in 1845, which resulted in Annexation and War, Annexation and War had been avoided. Again we say, let this never be forgotten; and when the Leaders of Northern Democracy, the men who now shout and yell with new-born opposition to the extension of Slavery, and who can see no political evil so dreadful as the spread of Slavery over the uninhabited wilds of New Mexico and California, but whose consciences (!) were easily reconciled to the propriety of spreading it over the fertile and comparatively populous Territory of Texas, -your Van Burens and Butlers, of the "dii majorum gentium," and your Barbers, and Fields, and Smiths, and Eastmans and Dillinghams, of the smaller fry,—when these excited and heart-broken anti-slavery patriots talk to us of the sin and wickedness of extending Slavery, let us be ready to ask them where THEY were, and where the Southern Whigs were. in 1845, when the great question of Annexing Texas as a Slave Territory, was openly and avowedly before the American People for their decision.

Every Whig Member of Congress from Slaveholding States, but one, voted against that Annexation. While your Northern, Free States, "democratic" Dillinghams, who were in Congress, were dodging and twisting and turning, to avoid the great issue, or openly voting for Slavery; and your Van Burens and Butlers and Barbers and Eastmans, were advocating and voting for the election of James K. Polk, who was nominated solely on account of his pro-slavery, and pro-annexation opinions! Nice young men, these new-fangled Locofoco "Free Soiler" are! They have scarcely yet begun to "peep" in the cause of anti-slavery extension, and already set themselves up as "leaders" in the cause!"Their mothers have scarcely yet got word that they "are out" of their pro-slavery collars, and they are already swaggering about, setting the Lake on fire with their exclusive zeal for Freedom! They humbug and cajole into their councils a few impracticable and visionary Whigs, like our friend the editor of the Burlington Courier, (who strains at Gen. Taylor and swallow Van Buren,) and straightway imagine they are battering down the whig walls, in old Vermont, with artillery stolen from whig armories! With not enough of Whig Principle (which, for 300 years has been synonymous with resistance to oppression and love of Freedom among them to be detected by the infinitesimal calculations of homeopathy. they arrogantly call on Whig Vermont to confer political power on them as the best means of carrying out Whig Principles! Fresh from the work of electing James K. Polk, and annexing an immense and boundless slave territory to the republic, they claim to be the "embodiment" in Vermont of hostility to further extension, and to receive the confidence of men who were contending for Freedom while they were contending for Slavery!