Congressional election.
--
To the Voters of the Second Congressional District:--In a recent editorial of the Richmond
Examiner many and most forcible reasons were given why you should elect to the first Congress of the Confederate States your respected fellow citizen and distinguished statesman,
Ex-President Tyler. If further reasons were wanted they would be found in the spirit and ability evinced in his recent eloquent and patriotic address to you and far more in the great moral weight which his presence in that Congress would have, not only with the
Congress and people of the
Confederate States, but with
our Northern enemies and with
foreign nations, to whom he is so well known.
But let him be defeated by any of the competing candidates and this result will be deemed abroad, and exultantly rejoiced over by our Northern foes as a rebuke by this district to his patriotic zeal and services in the
Southern cause.
Especially will this be so if his successful competitor be one who tardily and reluctantly acquiesced in secession, and in the
Convention voted against the expulsion of an
accomplice of Carlile,
now in the Federal Congress. And by
that competitor he will be defeated, if defeated at all. I refer to
Mr. Macfarland.
But my purpose is not to engage in the unnecessary task of advocating
Mr. Tyler's election; but to give some reason why his competitors should not be elected.
Of
Mr. Lee little need be said.
If he should not (as we still hope he will) see, and promptly act on the propriety of withdrawing from a hopeless canvass, the only effect of his persistence in his delusion will be to himself a great mortification, and the diversion of a very few votes from
Mr. Tyler, in aid to that extent of
Mr. Macfarland's success; for, between the latter and
Mr. Tyler the contest unquestionably will be. And this last objection is applicable with far greater force to
Mr. Lyons.
Although every impartial man in the district can see the moral certainty of his defeat, by a large majority, yet he will doubtless poll a considerable number of votes, and every one of those votes will be taken from
Mr. Tyler and aid in electing
Mr. Macfarland.
In his card, announcing himself a candidate, he stated that he did so because neither
Mr. Tyler nor
Mr. Macfarland were candidates.
They were both candidates a
few days after. Mr. Tyler's nomination appearing in the newspapers
the next day after Mr. Lyons's, it is believed, and probably written before
Mr. Lyons's. Let the people hold
Mr. Lyons to his own voluntary offer, and if he will not withdraw, as was expected of him, let the people themselves execute his first (
and best) intention.
To
Mr. Macfarland the objections have been already partly intimated.
A strenuous opponent up to the last moment of secession in the Convention of Virginia, where he
denied in argument the sovereignty of the States and the right of
succession as absurdities, uniformly voting with Carlile and his party before the act of secession, and long after that event against the expulsion from the
Convention of
Brown,
Carlile's accomplice, and
Lincoln's congressman, what could more prejudice this district in the estimation of the whole Southern Congress and Confederacy, or give more encouragement to our enemies, than the election of such a man to Congress, and that, too, as against such a competitor as
ex-President Tyler!
And yet such a disastrous result may be seriously hazarded by the persistence in the canvass of
Mr. Lyons.
Another great objection to
Mr. Macfarland is his office of Bank
President which, while it gives him an extensive and powerful influence, is just to that extent inimical to the proper exercise of the elective franchise by the people.
So dangerous to the purity and permanence of our institutions is this money power, that it is a serious problem with many whether our Constitutions, State and Confederate, ought not to render ineligible to office any officer of a money lending institution.
Besides this, one of the most important duties of the first Congress of the Confederate States will be to establish and put in operation, perhaps for many years, the policy of the
Government as to its finance and currency.
To deal with these momentous subjects in the councils of the
Confederacy, a Bank
President is the last man who should be selected.
They should be dealt with by
experienced and impartial statesmen, whose interests are identified with those of the
people, and not by the representative of a
corporation, whose function is to make as much money as possible out of the community.
One of the People.
