Fremont and his proclamation.
The Louisville Courier, of the 2d instant, has a long and able article on the progress of despotism in
Missouri, in which it thus deals with
Fremont and his proclamation:
Major General Fremont, known to the country principally by his insubordination and peculations in
California during the
Mexican war, and as the representative of the idea of the abolition of those ‘"twin relics of barbarism, slavery and polygamy,"’ in the Presidential canvass of '56, has issued a proclamation in which he assumes
all the administrative powers of the
State, establishes martial law throughout its limits, supersedes the constitution and civil law, confiscates property at his discretion, consigns all persons who may disregard his despotic commands to the tender mercies of a drum-head court- martial — the members of which act as persecutors, judges and jurors — and subjects his victimes to ‘"sudden and severe"’ punishments at his discretion — a proclamation in which he assumes absolute power over the property and lives of the people of the entire State, and proclaims his intention to be controlled in the exercise of that power only by his sovereign will and pleasure.
This extraordinary act is done without a shadow of warrant in the
Constitution or the laws, and without a pretence of any.
It is an abominable, atrocious, and infamous usurpation, by a military subordinate of the
President, of powers which are to-day neither exercised nor claimed by the most despotic ruler in
Europe — a usurpation which nothing could justify or excuse — a usurpation which outlaws the contemptible tyrant who thus would reduce to a slavery worse and more abject than that which prevails on Southern plantations the white freemen of a sovereign State--a usurpation which, authorized, sanctioned, and approved as it is by the
President, must open the eyes of the people of the entire country and the whole world to the designs of the Administration at
Washington to crush out the last vestige of free government here, and establish in its stead an absolutism more despotic and as irresponsible as that of
Turkey.
Thank God!
the tyranny of that royal Governor will be short lived.
The people of the
State were already rushing by hundreds and thousands to the defence of their homes and liberties, and this act was scarcely necessary to drive the last
Missourians to arms.
Under
Jackson, and
Price, and
McCulloch, and
Hardee, and
Pillow, a mighty host is gathering and advancing; and soon, like a thunderbolt, they will fall on the Hessian hordes of the tyrant and sweep them from the earth they pollute.
To-day this petty creature of a bastard
Nero, in his guarded tent, may dream of royalty, and imagine himself a king and the master of a million of his equals, but to-morrow will come, and then, a fugitive from the justice that must overtake him, or a trembling beggar for mercy from those he would have mercilessly betrayed, he will call in vain on the mountains to fall on and hide from a just and righteous retribution from which he cannot escape.
The people of
Missouri will triumph.
As sure as God liveth they will drive the invaders from their soil, and visit judgment on the heads of their oppressors.
Freemen cannot be conquered.
It will not be long until free government is restored in our sister State.--Soon the glad shouts of a delivered people will go up from the
Mississippi to the confines of
Kansas, and every friend of humanity will rejoice that the reign of tyranny has ceased in that mighty Commonwealth.
