The Daily State Journal

The platform of the Conservative party is not to be found in the fine words put together in a few resolutions by the chairman of their platform committee, and adopted last night by the convention, but it is to be found in the candidates which they have placed before the people. There is nothing noticeable in the platform except the resolutions in favor of the canal and free schools, which are taken at second hand from the Lynchburg platform of the Republican party. But there is a world of significance in the ticket. The names on the ticket indicate a great deal. They declare that the Conservative party are done with the conciliatory talk of 1872, and the submissive language of 1869; that we are to have no more "true" Republicanism or "liberal" Republicanism; that the Walker movement is abandoned and the Greeley tactics discarded: that they are done with all manifestations of satisfaction with the reconstruction laws of Congress, and with the latest amendments of the national constitution; that their talk against negro rule and carpet-bag domination means protest and defiance against the whole policy of reconstruction: and that in the persons of two Confederate officers and one unrepentant and unreconstructed politician, they have gone back to the white man's party bitterness, vituperation and sedition of 1868. In Mr. Daniel we have the author of a letter written in March, 1867, defiantly and seditiously denouncing the first act of reconstruction passed by Congress in that month. In Colonel Withers, we have the author of repeated declarations in 1868, to the effect that no laws of Congress could give the negroes a rightful title to suffrage and citizenship, and defiant announcements to the negroes that he did not desire or ask their votes. In General Kemper we have the representative of extreme sectional ideas in the state of the sort well pleasing to such a man as Jubal A. Early. In all, we have a set of candidates enthusiastically approved by that famous rebel, nominated unanimously by a convention of which General Early was the genius and master spirit. So we are to have over again in 1873 the same battle which brought on the public troubles of 1861-5, and which ought to have been ended under the apple tree of Appomattox. The party responsible for the war and for all its consequences will not sheath the sword, or smoke the pipe of peace. The peace of 1869 was a hollow truce. The acceptance of the situation in 1872 was but a sham and subterfuge. They will not let Virginia return in good faith and good feeling to the Union. The party of discord, hatred and political proscription repeats its struggle for ascendancy and control. Their device for securing it is by frightening the people about negro rule, and they hope to ride into power upon the hates, passions, intolerance and fears of race. The formal platform is really beneath criticism. After the tirades of disgusting abuse which they poured out upon General Grant last year, they now pretend to endorse his administration. After the fierce invectives against the negro, and horrifying deprecations of negro rule with which they have filled their newspapers for three months, they now profess to be desirous to accord all their rights to the negro race. In brief words, the only proper characterization of the platform, is as an ingenious fraud, intended to amuse and deceive the North, while the war of race and proscription is going on within the state. Equal rights to the negroes indeed! There cannot be counted five judges of the state courts who have allowed the negro citizen a place upon the juries of his country. The Conservative convention of 1873 has come, performed its work, and gone away. It was a body made up of good material, in the worth, character, and intellect of its membership. The assertion of its speakers, and the boast of its press, was, that it was a body of gentlemen representing a party of gentlemen; and no one has any disposition to deny the claim, or to disparage in any way those who composed it, or those whom it represented. But this convention of gentlemen, representing a party of gentlemen, indulged in the strain of remark towards its adversary characteristic of its class, and displaying the peculiar weakness of its class. Its speakers arrogated to it all the intelligence, worth, virtue, and patriotic devotion to Virginia which there was in the broad domains of the commonwealth; and when speaking of the Republican party often indulged in a vulgarity of abuse, and coarseness of imputation, peculiarly unbecoming a convention of gentlemen representing a party of gentlemen. In honorable contrast with this feature of the proceedings of this convention, we proudly point to those of our own representative body at Lynchburg, in which no epithets, no disparaging words, no abuse was heard towards its political adversaries. Certain it is, that the convention at Lynchburg, representing all classes of citizens, set an example of good manners which might be profitably imitated by its opponents.