Southern Standard

From the Natchez Free Trader.

The Washington Union and the South.

The Washington Union, once a journal most potential in the South, has forever forfeited Southern confidence by its subservient and trimming course on the great and absorbing question of Southern Rights. It became the avowed tool and apologist of Clay, Webster, Fillmore, Foote, Clemens, Cobb, Downs and others, who all united in the cry which was got up in a Congressional Caucus to put all Southern patriots who insisted upon the preservation of their constitutional rights under the ban of Secessionism. The Washington Union now begins to rub its eyes, as if awakening from a bewildering dream, and commences a sort of half apology for the State Rights Democracy, as if that unconquerable and unterrified band needed any excuse or palliation for the course they had taken, and which they will never relinquish until they obtain full indemnity for the past and security for the future.

When the veteran Ritchie conducted the Washington Union before he made his fatal mistake on the Southern question and became the auxiliary of Federal usurpation and consolidation, that journal was an oracle to all the Southern Democracy; it was their law and guide; their vade mecum and political rubric. But it is so no longer. It has no influence at all with the Whig party in the State of Mississippi, nor with a single one of the twenty-eight or twenty-nine thousand Democrats who voted for the high-minded and incorruptible Jef. Davis. A very few of the so-called "union democracy," which only mean union to Clay, Fillmore and Webster, may yet cling to the Washington Union, as drowning men would to a rotten plank. But its day of moral and political power, southward, is forever over; and no resurrection morning shall await it under its present editorial control. Its course politically, has been precisely like that of the State of Tennessee, of which State the Union is now but the spawn. The politicians of that State will never again (we mean the great mass of them) be trusted on questions involving Southern rights. The history of the Nashville Southern Rights Convention will ever remain a monument of their faithlessness and imbecility at a moment when perfect union and a solemn determination would have forever secured Southern equality in the great confederation of States.

Not all the desperate vigor with which the would-be-union democracy and the Whigs quoted the language of Andrew Jackson (whom they had generally despised while he was living) and perverted it from its application to the doctrine of nullification to a denunciation of earnest and sincere efforts to obtain Southern equality in the confederacy, will avail to hide the cloven foot of the consolidationists who have inflicted the deadliest stab upon the Democratic principle of State sovereignty that it has received since the administration of the older Adams. The stab was the deadlier because it came from hands that had once been fraternal. The vital blow was inflicted by traitors. The strange words of praise and adulation of Whig leaders and the consolidation measures of an overbearing general government were obtruded upon Democratic gatherings, by men calling themselves Democrats with the prefix of the word "union," which seemed to be the shibboleth of their bondage to Federalism and consolidation. Centralism was boldly avowed: and Clay's threat to desolate the South with Federal bayonets was re-echoed. The State Rights men of the Democracy will never forget that it was made a crime in them, and denounced as treason and secession to stand up boldly and sternly for Constitutional Rights of the South.

The Southern democracy know full well how to deal with the traitors in their own borders and look with a suspicious eye upon the endorsements of the democracy of the recreant Henry S. Foote by the Washington Union. Both the recreant and the endorser would be this moment repudiated by five out of six of all those who call themselves democrats in Mississippi. Next to the Washington Union's endorsement of Foote's democracy the most ludicrous thing is the Union's denunciation of the Memphis Appeal; a journal whose noble sentiments meet a warm response throughout Western Tennessee and the States of Mississippi and Arkansas. Of the two, as Southerners and friends of the only true constitutional Union, we would much rather receive the denunciation than the endorsement.

In closing this article, however, we beg leave to notice the wide discrepancy between the endorser and the endorsee. The Washington Union denounces Southern Whigs; Henry S. Foote holds the office of Governor (the only one he will ever again receive from Mississippians) by whig votes. Will the ingrate Foote, in turn, endorse the denunciation of the whigs, who elected him Governor, made by the Washington Union? He dare not do it, after the solemn declaration which he made at a public meeting, that "the whig party on the union question were more reliable than the democratic party?"

See the difference between Foote's endorsement of the reliability of the whig party and the denunciation of the same party by the Washington Union of the 26th of last month (February!).

The Washington Union says that there are "TWO GREAT POLITICAL TRUTHS"

"amply verified by the past experience of the coun-
"try. The first is, that no better Union party is
"needed, or can be formed, than the old demo
"cratic party of Jefferson, Madison, Jackson and
"Polk. The second is, that the rights of the South
"are not safe in the hands of the whig party, or-
"ganized as it now is, and for years has been,
"however fortunate or auspicious for the South
"may seem to be the circumstances attending its ac-
"cession to power."

We leave this wide chasm of sentiment between the endorser and the endorsed to be mutually leaped among themselves, which they can doubtless do, from their known skill in ground and lofty tumbling. We will however endorse and re-echo the words of the Union with an amendment: "THE RIGHTS OF THE SOUTH ARE NOT SAFE IN THE HANDS OF THE WHIG PARTY."

Our amendment is NOR ARE THE RIGHTS OF THE SOUTH SAFE IN THE HANDS OF THOSE WHOM THE WHIGS HAVE ELECTED TO OFFICE. AS THEY DID HENRY S. FOOTE!