Rensselaer Gazette, Volume 3, Number 29, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 November 1859 — freedom f. Opinion. [ARTICLE]

freedom f. Opinion.

The other day a mob of Kentucky Democrats went to the office of the“ Free South,” a free labor paper published at Newport, where one of the Federal Government’s barracks is situated, and where, of course, the people are more than usually zealous for slavery, as towns and individuals favored with Government patronage are in duty bound to be, and took the press and types and tumbled them into the Ohio river. The provocation was simply and solely that the paper was an “abolition concern,” Thdre was no intimation of danger from an insurrection, no allegation that the paper was indecent, or unfit for moral reasons to be read, no objection to its existence of any kind, but its “abolitionism.” It wasn’t a very able paper, and therefore very unlikely to alarm anybody by its free thunder. It was a little, weak ami pretty much useless paper, supported mainly by contribution from the East. Its circulation was hardly more than five hundred all told, and very little of it was in or around Newport. It was tlferefoie the most unlikely of all possible publications to excite any movement of any kind. But Democratic Kentuckians were in a feYer of terror or hatred at its “incendiary” doctrines, and so put it in the river to cool ]themselves. This attack on the freedom of opinion was the more unjustifiable, because of the utter helplessness of the owner, Mr. Bailey. He was a poor man, so poor that be couldn’t afford to hire printers. His little daughters set the type, and he did the press work. It was a “family paper” emphatically. But the Democrat's were too much enraged or scared to care whether a family of little children were deprived of support or not, or a poor man ruined. So they bravely assailed the office, which was the family sitting room, despite the danger which a terrified crowd of little girls with “composing sticks” must have presented, and heroically bore off the pernicious and incendiary press to destruction. We have no comment to make for none is needed. N. Take another case in illustration of the same calm endurance of opposing opinions, which is so frequently exhibited by Southern Democrats, and is so characteristic of men who are confident in the truth of their opinions:

“Mr. T. II Stillwell lias been arrested at Alexandria, V;i., upon a charge *>f uttering, •sedi ious language’ while conversing on the subject of the Harper’s Ferry affair. Mr. James A. Houtenburgh has become his security. Mr. Stillwell is said to be a recent emigrant from the North.” The “seditious language” was the remark that “he didn’t blame the negroes for wanting to be free, and thought the slaveholders were us m -ch to blame as the slaves.” It is well that Thomas Jefferson is out of the reach of arrest, or liis notorious seditious language would have put him in jail with Stillwell. It would be rather queer for men calling themselves Jeffersonian Democrats to arrest Jefferson for condemning slavery, but if he were living we don’t well see how he could escape. Democracy is a greut institution! — State Journal. Dan says that, whenever he wants a hot hath, and hasn’t the money to pay for it, he has only to tel! his girl flint lie has made up liis mind to select another sweetheart. ami he is in hot water directly.