Summary

The article, reprinted from the Harrisburg Patriot and Union, steered clear of pronouncements upon the merits or morality of slavery; instead, it focused on the politicization of slavery. The editors suggested slavery was a divisive issue only because it is dealt with as an abstraction, not as a reality. Democratic editors contended that parties and politicians need not address such abstractions. In fact, the editors asserted, it was an issue that can and must be avoided for the health of the party.

EXCERPT:

"We should not be asked to sacrifice the Northern Democracy in defense of an abstraction--an abstraction so pure that the Southern advocates of Congressional protection to slavery cannot point to the Territory where they would have this protection applied."

"They [white Southerners] have the right to hold also that slavery is the best condition of the negro--that it conduces to his happiness, humanization, and elevation--that it transforms him from a barbarian into one of the elements of civilized society; but they have no right to compel every man at the North who is ready to fight for the maintenance of Southern rights under the Constitution, to think precisely as they do upon these points, which are in no way essential to a proper respect and reverence for the compromises of the Constitution."

Full-text web version of newspaper

"In the first half of 1860 Democratic editors in Franklin County emphasized slavery's compatibility with the Northern economy and society and Northern complicity in the South's institution."