From the date of its organization, the committee, a majority whereof are inhabitants of Quodlibet, meet once a week with most commendable punctuality, and, as we have reason to believe, with signal usefulness to the glorious cause in which we have embarked. Zachary Younghusband, who is a member, gratuitously and generously, out of his mere zeal in the cause, proffered the use of his room up stairs above the tin-plate workshop, for our sessions—an offer which we were reluctantly obliged to decline, after one trial, on account of the noise created by the workmen below. I mention this praiseworthy offer as due to Zachary, in favor of whom the committee passed a vote of thanks. We found a more quiet place of meeting in the back room of the cabinet store of Isaiah Crape, the Undertaker, for which we agreed to pay fifty cents a week and find our own lights. In this secluded spot much is done to shape and direct the destinies of this Great Republic.
[CHAPTER XVIII.]
PROCEEDINGS OF THE GRAND CENTRAL COMMITTEE—VINDICATION OF THE SEVERITY PRACTICED AGAINST GENERAL HARRISON—TACTICS OF THE NEW LIGHTS—ABOLITIONISM—SELLING WHITE MEN FOR DEBT—HARRISON A COWARD—CONSIDERATIONS WHICH LED TO THE NAMING OF THE OPPOSITION BRITISH WHIGS—STRATAGEM AGAINST HARRISON, AND THE CLAMOR AGAINST HIM FOR NOT ANSWERING—HOPE OF THE NEW LIGHTS CONFIRMED BY THE CONNECTICUT, RHODE ISLAND, AND VIRGINIA ELECTIONS—BALTIMORE CONVENTION A FAILURE—IMPORTANT LETTER FROM MR. FLAM—AMOS KENDALL'S PURPOSE TO RESIGN—EXCITEMENT OF COMPOSITION PRESCRIBED BY HIS PHYSICIAN—CENTRAL COMMITTEE SANCTION THE COMPILATION OF THESE ANNALS.
The Grand Central Committee having been thus happily organized, devoted itself with exemplary diligence to the important concerns of the Presidential election, which, from this time forth, became the engrossing subject of all men's thoughts. A volume would not suffice to develop the multifarious labors of the committee. I could not in less space recount the resolutions, with long argumentative preambles, linking by means of Whereases, like rings, whole newspaper loads of facts, invented for the purpose;—the addresses, the speeches copied from the Globe, and extracts from private letters—to say nothing of the paragraphs, the sole offspring of editorial brains, and all the other machinery employed by the committee to defame, traduce, and vilify General Harrison, for the unpardonable sin of being thought by the Whigs a fit man to preside over this vast Republic. It was our duty to render, if possible, his very name offensive in the nostrils of the people. In this endeavor it may easily be imagined that we found abundance to do in rummaging up old scraps of history, the falsification of public records, the oblique interpretation of equivocal laws, and in practicing all the other customary arts of warfare known to the New-Light tactics.
Admirable is that wisdom of the New Democracy which has provided such an ordeal of punishment for the man who, in opposition to their wishes, dares to make claim to the favor of the people. What better chastisement can be inflicted upon such rash aspirant, than this preliminary gauntlet which it is ordained for him to run before he can be made sensible of the insolence of his pretensions? Thrice tormented is it his lot to be, in the fiery furnace of hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness, before he shall see the end of his vain probation. As certain tribes of Indians have a custom of torturing, to the verge of stoutest human endurance, the candidate for the honor of being accounted a Brave; so in imitation of this commendable usage did we determine, in no less degree, to torture the man whom the hardihood of the Whigs had placed before the nation for the like empty and unavailing honor.
It did truly seem to the New Lights no small insolence of those men who call themselves Whigs, to propose any individual for the Presidency, while the people were already favored with a chief whose whole life was lustrous with the radiance of the Quodlibetarian Democracy. The very idea of a New Light presupposes an innate, inherent, and intuitive fitness to fill any station of any kind or degree whatever; and here was one distinguished as the very fountain of New-Light principles already at the head of the nation, dispensing the favors and wielding the power of his great office to the supreme content of all Quodlibetarians—the only persons in this Republic whose interests deserve to be held of any account in the concerns of government. Nothing but the rankest faction could originate an opposition to his beneficent administration. Acting upon this conviction, the Central Committee certainly did not spare General Harrison.
It was, however, soon perceived that the General was a little stronger with the people than we supposed him to be; and sundry were the changes to which we were consequently obliged to resort in our mode of attack. The abolitionism we never lost sight of: the selling of white men into slavery for debt was also a steady topic; and some of the more ingenious of the committee fell upon the device of proving the old General a coward: but our great effort was to convert him and all his friends into old Blue-Light Federalists. This was always considered our master-stroke; and I may appeal to all the New-Light papers of this day for evidence, that in that department of our labors we plied our task with an industry that has never been surpassed. The Jersey election, also, we turned to great account in Congress, and certainly blew our trumpet on that question both loud and long. It was a noble illustration of our zeal for State Rights, which all the world knows is one of the favorite articles in our present faith. With an eye to this same question of State Rights, we succeeded in getting up a tolerable good commotion in Congress on the subject of State debts; holding it our duty, as friends of the sovereignty of the States, to do all in our power to break down their credit, and to warn the world against placing any confidence in their pledges—although, upon this subject, I am bound to confess that our success has not answered our expectations.
There was one movement upon which our committee placed great reliance. Mr. Van Buren, and indeed the whole New-Light Democracy, had so often changed their course upon public measures, as I have already shown, that the nation had been by degrees brought into a belief that every public man was, of necessity, and from the very nature of his organization, bound to certify, at least once a year, the state of his principles and the character of his opinions on all questions of policy whatever. Now Mr. Van Buren, in 1836, came to the Presidency upon a very summary, and to himself, very comfortable profession of faith. All that he professed at that time was to follow in the footsteps—which said footsteps had scope and variation enough to allow him to take any path he thought proper. General Harrison, in that contest of 1836, did not enjoy this advantage, but was compelled to be somewhat specific in the indication of the grounds upon which his election claimed to be based. He had, consequently, not only been very full in this exposition, but had likewise referred his interrogators to a vast amount of written and printed opinions, which on divers occasions, in the course of his public career, he had found reason to express.