Raynor HCA 2013-01
This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 1/10/2013
Complete and authentic issue of The Connecticut Journal, New Haven, January 15, 17954pp., , disbound, VG. Page one in this decidedly Federalist organ features an address by the "GERMAN REPUBLICAN SOCIETY of Philadelphia, to the FREE and INDEPENDENT CITIZENS of the United States." Written in the aftermath of the Whiskey Rebellion, which had demonstrated the federal government's willingness to suppress rebellions. The address, and others like it, signaled a final acceptance of the Constitution by its opponents who resolved to work within the system in the form of "Democratic Societies" giving birth to the Democratic-Republican party. The German republicans in Philadelphia chafed at being "charged with the authorship of the western insurrection, and upon this unsupported assertion, and interdiction of the most dreadful kind was to be fulminated against us…. Are we the abettors of insurgents for supposing government can do wrong, for disapproving an excise? Then is the freedom of opinion at an end, --… The right to associate in Democratic Societies has been questioned by some ; but if we have not this privilege, by what constitutional text will other associations by justified? … If Democrats have been the instruments of the western insurrection, how will it be explained that they were among the foremost to suppress it? Our brethren, the Democratic Society of Pennsylvania, could have made a quorum in the field, and they were among the number who received the commendations of the President of the United States. Fellow-citizens, this subject is solemnly important to every freeman in the United States, for however some may disapprove our institution, all must unite in support of the liberty of speech … All governments are more or less combinations against the people ; they are states of violence against individual liberty, originating, from a man's imperfection and vice, and as rulers have no more virtue than the ruled, the equilibrium between them can only be preserved by proper attention & association …" A remarkable document marking the beginnings of the First Party System in the United States. The second page includes Gen. Henry Knox's letter of resignation as Secretary of War to George Washington, 28 December 1794: "…After having served my country nearly twenty years, the greatest portion of which, under your immediate auspices, it is with extreme reluctance I find myself constrained, to withdraw from so honorable a situation. But the natural and powerful claims on a numerous family, will no longer permit to neglect their essential interests …" More fine content.
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