The Daily Dispatch: January 17, 1862., [Electronic resource]

George N. Sanders to the Democracy of the Northwest Fragment of the late United States.

Nashville, January, 8, 1862.

to the Democratic Masses of the Mississippi Valley, Nork

was the spirit of genuine Republican liberty burnt out of you by the Wide-awake fairest is the wine of your blood turned to water, your muscle to blunder, your brain to pulp — are you resolved into inorganic, matter, to be quickened into a meaner life by the higher law inspiration of fanatics and usurpers. If of your former selves, and the historic glories of your party, memory alone remain, you must standing has at your present imbecile and stultified position.

by your freshly chosen delegates at your county towns; at your State capitals, at Charleston, at Baltimore, insolemn Convention exermbled — by your Senators and Representatives in Congress — by your meetings in mass every where, by your representative or a foes, and by your press, you pledged yourselves, with all the forms known to civilization giving solemnity to popular action, to stand by your allies of the South as a band of brothers. And after the triumph of your enemies, the enemies of constitutional rights you made your resolves it possible still more earnest, by reiterating them in as many and as imposing forms, as well as by defiant proclamations to the Northern Saracen, that he would have to trample on your sacrificed bodies before he could pass on to Southern soil. And are these high resolves to stand for naught?

I look to you alone, pushing aside recreant leaders, to preserve to your unfortunate country anything of constitutional liberty out of the anarchy into which the Lincoln Government has thrown your Constitution, laws and trade. The men you most honored and trusted had not, with a few memorable exceptions, the virtue and intelligence to resist at the outset, the Lincoln usurpation but for the most part gave way; and very many strove to out-herod the most fanatical Wide-Awakes in their outrages on the Constitution, and the rights of the people. They hoped by such shallow trickery to be able to dead the unlicensed war party of the North.

the capitalists and self-styled conservatives of your great Atlantic cities have betrayed the confidence your generosity reposed in their direction of your interests in the late Presidential canvass. These mere moneymaking machines never had any sympathy with or appreciation, of Republican liberty, and it is not surprising that they rejoiced at the first glean of a sword Government, and arrogantly believe that if their ill-gotten dollars had not sufficient power to subjugate your old allies and co-disciples — the States-right men of the South--they had the strength to establish at least a police, Government over yourselves, through which labor would become absolutely the bond-slave of capital--‘"We will make the South acknowledge that we have a Government over her, and power to enforce our edicts,"’ was the concerted; suppressive cry of these men from the outset, to drown your honest voice of indignation. And while the only practical effect of this wall street war-whoop has been to make yourselves feel the iron heel of the worst of military despotisms, the power of your Union is neither felt nor respected beyond the military lines of the ball-spitting Generals.

in this the Northern Republican managers have proved the weakest and most supercilious agents that ever before directed State affairs. There is not another Government or people on the earth that would not have listened to such a protest as came up from the South, by State action and by their Senators and Representatives in Congress.

the madmen wanted to exhibit to the world a strong, unbending, uncompromising Government, capable of asserting and maintaining its power everywhere in these States, as if they would excel in this particular as a model, the Governments of Russia and Austria; Blinded and maddened by the mere waving of a flag, as the bull by the bandera of the matador, you swell the crafty contractor's armies, unthinking that you are the victims of a system that is sapping your political rights, you have but to open your eyes to see that this is a war of capital against labor. Reckon the high rate of interest and the down ward prices of everything that labor produces, and you will soon comprehend that you are in danger of becoming the powerless Sampson of the money shaving Delilah.

Contrast your present condition with what it would have been had the Republican managers listened to the warning voice of the South. As splendid as was the year 1860, 61 would have rivalled it, and 62 with its three or four hundred millions of cotton, tobacco, sugar, rice, and naval stores, would have made you the richest and most independent nation known to commerce; and to-day the balance-sheet of the money-changers of the world would be kept in New York.

in the entire South you see scarcely any manufactures, except from Northern workshops. European Wares are almost unknown because of the Federal prohibitory tariffs.--Wait but a nation's hour; the blockade opens, and these things are all reversed. Our less shackled trade with Europe will at once swell our exports to five hundred millions of dollars, and our warehouses will become the depots of luxuries and substantial productions of the world, at prices within the reach of moderate but well paid labor. You, will thus be able to furnish yourselves by the ‘"Father of Waters"’ with the world's choicest productions at twenty-five per cent less than the Yankees now charge you under the Morrill Tariff.

you have immense supplies of breadstuffs, meat, and provisions, at present of little value to you; wisdom might suggest the retention and warehousing of these supplies along the Ohio Valley to await our rich markets soon to be open to you. I clip from a Nashville morning paper the prices current of a few leading articles:

bacon	25 cts. Per lb.
pork	10 cts. Per lb.
flour	$8.00 per bbl.
Wheat	1.40 per bus.
whiskey	1.00 per gal.
Leather	75 cts. Per lb.
Potatoes	$1.00 per bus.

New Orleans 28th dec.

Pork, mess	$44 per bbl.
Beef	30 per bbl
Flour	10 per bbl.
Potatoes	5 per bbl.
Pig Iron	40 per ton.

Look at your own prices current and see what your are paying for cotton, tobacco, sugar, rice, and naval stores, and reflect that we have on hand of these staple articles, at the prices you are now paying at least seven hundred millions value to exchange with you. For the abstract idea of the negro's equality to a responsibility to which they find themselves unequal, the Wide-Awakes wantonly destroy a system that gave them a monopoly of all this trade, and of other great advantages; thus sealing their own incapability of conducting the affairs of any Government.

Whatever the future of the South may be the fanatical Puritan will be forever cut off from a voice in her councils. History must record the fact that the Abolitionized Puritan and German broke up the Government of Washington. To such men the privilege of the elective franchise should never be extended.

The wholesale abandonment of State and individual, rights by your representative men, creates doubt as to whether there is sufficient virtues and intelligence left among the Northern people to enable them to make the effort to restore their Government to its original character, It will, however, soon be in the power of the people of the Ohio Valley by bold revolutionary acts to tear themselves from the Lincoln iniquity.

Organize organize for revolution. Form clubs in every neighborhood, whether you have associated action or not. Let your first objects be to prevent enlistments and contributions to the army of the usurpers, to elect one of your number to all of your municipal State, and Federal offices within your gift. Sammer will not open upon you before giving you the opportunity. Be ready to rise as our invincible armies advance. Vindicate, your trampled manhood by the overthrow of the usurpers, and prove yourselves worths a place in civilized communities. The Southern slopes of Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio; fighting side by side with Kentucky, Missouri, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Louisiana, all of the valley of the Mississippi for the Right, will re-establish much that has been lost by treading leaders, and the (madness of the hour. The North will become so dismantled before the close of the way, that the people along the border will have the power and may determine to change the line between the free and slave States--in this way dissipated rights may be entirely restored to a part of your territory.

But there can be no place for any portion of you in this Confederacy without the thorough approval and hearty adoption of the Constitution of the Confederate States;

Which is but a more open expression of the Federal Constitution as always interpreted by Jefferson and Madison.

Had the Northern people been true to the institutions of the fathers of democracy; had the doctrine of the Kentucky Resolutions of '98 been the rule of action instead of merely the subjects of the topical flourish, probably no cause for separation would ever have existed. But the long festering corruption in the political condition of the North the moral fever of the disorganizing, agrarian, family breaking doctrines which have been sedulously poured into her social system, was oblige to work its way through the flesh of the body politic laying it before the astonished world, a hideous deformity, a helpless hulk.

The independence of the State is the only safe-guard against the centralizing and despotic instincts of the General Government, the only solution of the great question of successfully combining the diverse interests, different political institutions, varieties of climate and production of vast territories, into a vigorous national unity consistent with the preservation of the liberties of the citizens. Fidelity to citizens rights is always the test of the health of a Republic.--I am a Roman Citizen its was the proudest boast of the sons of the Eternal City in the days of her majesty and purity I am an American citizen its had become almost equal in magic over, a greater world than the Roman dreamed of. ‘"Sovereign citizen"’ is therefore no exaggerated expression, By honorable adherence to these rights shall a nation ever preserve itself from lawless innovations of crude and evil minds, shall invigorate its system with the absence of an everlasting youth, shall be more and more prepared for the highest forms of political power.

It is the more faithful recognition of citizens rights that gives the South the soundness and strength over the North which, in this hour of precipitate trial, has astonished Europe and America, and no one more than the evil-eyed disorganizers among yourselves, who prophesied with demoniac glee the destruction of Southern homes by internal eruption.

As there never was so wicked a war waged by any Government as this! of the Wide-Awake Cabinet against the people of the South, so, in merited retribution, no Government ever fell so rapidly from, political power and reputation as that of the dis-United States. The English Government, if it were tyrannical against the American colonies, was at least dignified at home. The French revolution was holy in comparison with this abolition crusade both by its multiplied and awful, provocations and by its aims, for, though blindly directed, it heroically struck out for citizens' rights, while the North is basely, madly, trampling them under foot.

This day was made holy nearly half a century ago by the flow of Southern blood in defence of neutral rights. To-day the truckling traitors to the Constitution of the once United States, stultifying the nations historic policy by a brigand violation of those acknowledged international rights, have been driven to a merited humiliation, and at this hour, the once haughty flag-which received its immortal baptism in Southern song is trailing in the dust before a Jeering world. The Nemesis of Destiny will yet snatch from their desecrated hands the star spangled banner" and all its heraldic glories.

Geo. N. Sandees.