Under these circumstances it is not strange that equally honest and intelligent Democrats should have taken opposite courses on the question of the adoption or rejection of the constitution, and considering the outrageously impudent, dictatorial, and denunciatory measures resorted to by vagabond poltiticians to coerce Democrats to endorse the vagabond principles which had crept into the constitution it is reasonable to suppose that multitudes who would otherwise have voted for the instrument have recorded their votes against it as the only means of reducing such politicians to their true dimensions and teaching them better manners.

A portion of the Democratic press in its anxiety to secure the good features of the instrument has endeavored to defend the whole. In this respect we have differed from others. We have been opposed to the exemption and the rights of married women (falsely so called) from the outset, and for expressing in our paper a plump condemnation of these principles when they first passed the convention a scene was enacted in the convention hall which for the honor of the territory rather than that of the persons engaged in it we will not describe. The constitution being submitted to the people, we preferred on the whole its adoption to its rejection and have labored to defend such principles contained in it as were defensible and left such as were not to be defended by those who insisted upon placing them there. But the whole is defeated. We regret the result, and still more do we regret the causes which produced it.

THE COURSE OF THE DEMOCRAT

[April 13, 1847]

The editorial contents of the last number of this paper are just what we should have expected from the owners, aiders, and gettersup of the concern. We said long ago that this sheet was in the bank interest and its owners traitors to the Democracy. They have now furnished the proof to our hand; and we hope the party will open its eyes to the machinations of this squad of federal defaulters and skimmings from the cauldron of political depravity.

The paper says: "The people of Wisconsin have voted that they will have banks!" It is false. We deny it. The people have voted for no such thing. No objections, save to the sixth section, were ever urged even by Whigs to the bank article. Talk about the people of Green, Lafayette, Iowa, and Grant counties voting for banks! Talk about the Democracy of Wisconsin voting for banks!

It is a libel on their integrity. We do not know three Democrats in Dane County in favor of banks if we except the Democrat squad, and not a man who voted against the constitution on account of the bank article. Yet we now predict and know that the Democrat and its troop of conservative Federalists will henceforth become bank champions. Whiffling with every breeze and trimming their sails to catch every gale they will now desert Democratic principles, which they never embraced with any sincerity of heart.

Again, this sheet says: "The next convention will undoubtedly be Whig." Could the rankest federal sheet have claimed more? Who authorized this Tadpole concern to strike the Democratic flag? Where did it learn that the lion-hearted Democracy of Wisconsin had abandoned the field, and would "undoubtedly elect Whigs?” The editor doubtless thinks them as great fools as his peculiar clique are known to be knaves, but he is mistaken. The Democracy of Wisconsin never surrender. That a large number voted against the constitution no more makes them Whigs than the late desertion of the Tadpole tribe from the federal ranks now makes them Democrats. They are still true to their Democratic principles, and like freemen have dared, whether right or not, to vote as they saw fit upon a question of mere expediency and law.

While we regret the defeat of the constitution, the result is not entirely unexpected. We had strong hopes until we saw the infamous course pursued by three or four bags of wind, who were so anxious to hear the noise of their own penny trumpets that they fell to crying down men every way their superiors. The ashes of the dead were violated to stab the living. The old, gray-haired veteran executive was assailed and every effort made to drag his name into the controversy, although he had studiously avoided all participation in the contest. The scenes of 1840 were reënacted— rowdy doggerel was sung-anvils fired-whiskey drunk-ridiculous flags raised and little bodies puffed up large with the wind of ambition, whose recent defection from federalism was notorious, went around our county exhaling their wind and piling up large masses of words, and at the same time denouncing old Democrats and threatening to drive them out of the party if they did not follow their rush light. To be sure, there were two or three exceptions to this rule, but the little potato brood, incapable of appreciating their own insignificance, utterly disgusted the whole people. This accounts for the result in Dane County. Had the voice of reason been listened to, it would have been widely different.

We are glad this sheet is finally showing its colors. It avows its bank sympathies, and gives up an unfought field to the enemy without offering to strike a blow. It holds to no principle, but is willing to follow any evanescent glare which shines across its path-as if either success or defeat could change Democratic principles. Well, let it go over to the enemy where it belongs. Its idiotic ravings have damned the constitution in this county, and the quicker it leaves the better.

THE POSITION OF J. A. NOONAN 17

To the Editors of the Argus:

[May 18, 1847]

MADISON, May 12, 1847

Enclosed I send you the copy of a letter which I on Saturday addressed the editor of the Detroit Free Press in relation to some misstatements made respecting me by a Milwaukee correspondent. The motives and views of the Democratic portion of the opposers of the late would-be constitution have been so grossly misrepresented both within and out of the territory that I will thank you to give the reply a place in the next number of the Argus.

Yours respectfully,

To the Editors of the Free Press

J. A. N.

MADISON, May 8, 1847

GENTLEMEN: On my arrival at this place last evening a friend called my attention to a letter in your paper of the 27th ult. dated "Milwaukee, April 16," in which it is stated that I voted against and opposed the adoption of the constitution which has lately been before the people of this territory, and that I "with other bank Democrats distributed appeals to the 'brother Whigs' to rally to their aid."

I deem it my duty to say to you that the author of the letter in his allusions to me uttered but one truth and asserted two unqualified falsehoods. The truth is that I voted against the constitution. The falsehoods are that I am a "bank Democrat," and that I circulated appeals to "brother Whigs to rally to the aid" of those opposing the constitution.

It is true that I did in common with over eight thousand other Democrats in this territory vote against the crude and illy-digested thing called "the constitution," and we claim we had a right so to do,

17 Josiah A. Noonan came to Wisconsin from New York in 1836. In 1838 he established the Madison Wisconsin Enquirer; in 1841 this was removed to Milwaukee and the name changed to the Courier. Noonan was postmaster at Milwaukee from 1843 to 1848 and from 1853 to 1857. He bore a prominent part in the early political life of Wisconsin, and was famous for the number of lawsuits in which he engaged. He died at the Wauwatosa asylum in December, 1882.

both as citizens and partisans. The members of the convention that signed and supported the constitution as well as the respectable number that did not sign and opposed it disclaimed that the question of adoption or rejection was a party question. The Democratic members of the territorial legislature did the same; and [at] all the Democratic county conventions that alluded to the subject at all as well as at meetings of the supporters of the constitution resolutions of a similar import were passed. In fact the friends of the constitution went farther than this. They issued circulars appealing to the Whigs, as partisans, to support the constitution, and in their appeals reminded the Whigs of the fact that some of the most novel and prominent and I might say fraudulent-features of the constitution had never been broached nor advocated in any public body in the territory except the Whig convention for Dane County, held at this place last fall.

Among the most active in the support of the constitution in the territory were ex-Governor Doty and a choice lot of politicians of that ilk; and among the opponents, as I am credibly informed, were all the members of the territorial Democratic central committees, a majority of the present central committee, and eight out of every ten Democrats who had been in Wisconsin five years and upwards. In order that the Detroit Democrats may see how much of a party question the adoption was I will state that among the most effective supporters of the constitution were Maj. J. S. Fillmore, late proprietor of the Milwaukee Sentinel, J. S. Rowland Esq., late of Detroit and recent editor of the same paper, and John Strong Esq., late of Grand Rapids in your state. Those at all acquainted with the gentlemen above named and dozens of others in Milwaukee that I might mention can tell how much of a Democratic party question it must have been to have enlisted their active and zealous support.

So far from the imputation being well-founded that myself and other Democrats that opposed the constitution did so because it prohibited banks, directly the reverse was the fact. The sixth section of the article on banking, which prohibited-or it was intended to prohibit-under heavy pains and penalties the circulation in the state of any notes of less denomination than twenty dollars, was looked upon as impracticable and absurd, especially when our pecuniary relations with the old states were taken into consideration. But the warm advocates of banks, both before and during the sitting of the convention, that profess to belong to the Democratic party with scarcely one exception supported the constitution;

and the reason given by their principal leader for their so doing was that in supporting it they "were physicking ultra Locofocoism to death with its own medicine." Several prominent Whigs went for the constitution on this ground alone.

The insinuations that the Democratic opponents of the constitution did more than its advocates to gain the support of the Whigs the writer knew to be untrue. The six first meetings called to oppose the adoption were calls for Democratic meetings with the names of from two hundred to five hundred Democratic voters attached to them. The friends, on the contrary, called their meetings to the very last without respect to party and implored in the most beseeching manner the support of all; and in some instances where they thought they could gain votes by it they were frank enough to make the truthful declaration that the question pending was not intimately connected with our party divisions, but was one of expediency only.

Your correspondent throughout his letter shows a degree of ignorance of the territory and a regardlessness of truth that indicate with sufficient distinctness who he is. Bankrupted and run out in every respect in two or three states he was spawned upon the territory a few years since in a condition of utter moral, political, and pecuniary destitution. The only capital he had on hand to commence business with was a naturally inventive genius for humbug and imposture. This was "to let" to any party that would pay best for it, and unfortunately his interests were such that he became ostensibly enlisted in support of the Democratic party. The defeat of the constitution was a severe disappointment to all such politicians. The prospect of Wisconsin's becoming a state has afforded them capital to play the political broker with at Washington and elsewhere for the last two years.

The votes of our honest Democracy have been mortgaged by them a half a dozen times over to presidential aspirants, thus imitating the example of their prototype who offered from the mountain large possessions to the Saviour upon certain unworthy conditions. Their promises and capital are shattered and their calculations broken in upon by Wisconsin's not becoming a state at the moment predicted. Another reason for the manifestation of so much soreness is that such politicians thrive only in times of high political excitement. It is only when the political cauldron is at high heat that the scum generates and collects upon the surface.

Still another and perhaps as potent a reason for the manifestation of so much peevish malignity as any other is that in defeating the