Rensselaer Gazette, Volume 3, Number 41, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 February 1860 — The Disunion Ranters. [ARTICLE]

The Disunion Ranters.

The New York Courier and Enquirer says: “Those who are familiar with Congressional debates, need not to be told, that the general character of the Southern speeches on the floor of the House of Representatives, is characterized by reckless flippancy rather than by dignity, discretion or judgment. And the speeches of such men as Keitt, Gartrell, Leake and some twenty others, who have foolishly and childishly proclaimed on tfie floor of the House, that the election of Wm. H. Seward to the Presidency, or Sherman as Speaker, would be abundant cause for a dissolution of the Union, and that the South will therefor secede, are only evidences of the weakness and folly of those who thus stultify themselves, instead of conveying to the country the feelings and opinions of any large portion of their constituents. It is melancholy to reflect that such weak and childish men, can be elected to seats in Congress; but it must bo born in mind; that all political power in the Southorn country, is in the hands of the two hundred and fifty thousand slaveholders, and that a majority of the six millions of‘poor whito men’ who do not hold slaves, are in such a miserable condition, that books have been published and circulated in favor of reducing them to a state of slavery 1 and many Southern presses

have openly advocated such proceedings. It follows then, that these ‘fire-eaters,’ as they boastfully call themselves, represent simply the slave power of the South, or in other words, the two hundred and fifty thousand of the six million of white and four million of colored population of the United States.”