Montgomery Weekly Confederation, August 17, 1860

The Staunton Vindicator says that nothing is now left for the friends of Douglas in Virginia "but to proceed to organize the National Democracy, and marching forth in the right, to fight the battle through, and either fall or triumph in defense of the honor and integrity of the National party and their candidates, Douglas and Johnson."

Thus speaks the great organ of the Tenth Legion Democracy of the old Dominion; and it speaks well. We trust such will be the policy in every State of the Union. No alliance, no combination, no union, no sympathy with the seceders and disunionists, the sectional disorganizers, on the part of the National Democracy supporting Douglas and Johnson at no time, no place, and under no circumstances. The disruptionists, led by Yancey, Rhett & Co., have deliberately left the great Democratic party of the Union. Not only so, but they assembled their faction, organized another party, as they avowed, upon the debris—ruins—of the National Democracy, and to counteract its policy, (so said Mr. Rhett, who leads the forces in South Carolina,) and nominated a ticket for the Presidency and Vice Presidency; a ticket that they call National in one section of the Union (as in the Northern part of Alabama, and the Northern and Middle States generally;) sectional in another, (as in South Carolina;) "States' Rights Constitutional" in another, (as here about Montgomery—see Mr. Judge's letter,) and the Union Democratic party in others. Such is the piebald concern that the old line, true blue State rights National Democracy—with but one and the same name from Maine to California and Oregon—are invited to join, in such localities only where the disunionists think themselves in a minority, and no hope of success without them!

But however all this might be overlooked or disregarded; have the National Democrats supporting Mr. Douglas no self-respect? Will they get upon their knees, and crawl into the counsels of men who have applied to them every possible form of opprobrious epithet of which the language is capable? Shall we cordially take the political hand of men who have denounced us as no better than abolitionists and freesoilers; who have expressed a preference for even Lincoln over Judge Douglas, who has done more for the South against the abolitionists than all the Rhetts and Yanceys in christendom? Who have denounced our Convention as a conclave of "Squatters" without authority—a "Rump Convention," to which no allegiance is due by the Democracy, and where no Southern man could go with honor? Who have tried to heap upon us every species of ridicule and contempt, branding us as submissionists and traitors, and thus rendering us, if they could, socially, as well as politically, odious among our neighbors and countrymen?

No. The Douglas men that would join them would be proving themselves the fit recipients of all the odium and abuse that has been heaped upon them. Let us forever stand aloof, at least in a state of armed neutrality, from such an intolerant and proscriptive set of Jacobin conspirators. They have no lot or part with us. We wish to rally and preserve the Democracy and perpetuate its ascendancy, in order to save the Confederacy formed by our revolutionary fathers, and transmit it to our children. They, on the contrary, are trying to disrupt and defeat the Democracy, in order that a Black Republican may be elected, that the Union may be dissolved and that they, the leaders, may be put at the head of a Southern Confederacy.

Between such men and the National Democracy supporting Douglas and Johnson, there is and can be no sympathy whatever. We repudiate both the doctrines they teach and the men whom they put forth to disseminate them. We seek not their alliance and scorn their wooings. We have no doubt, now, that the recent elections have disclosed their utter imbecility, and inability to carry scarcely a single Southern State, that the National Democrats would be welcomed as marvelously clever fellows, if they would only "help me Cassius or I sink." But Cassius is going to let this Caesar sink this time certain and sure.

We hope, therefore, for the honor and respect of the party, that our friends in Virginia will not commit the great folly—the crime, of uniting their forces with the disorganizers of the Richmond Convention—the supporters of Breckinridge and Lane. If they do we hope, from the depths of our soul, that the ticket may be as disastrously beaten as it has just been in Kentucky. But we have no fear of it. We have every confidence that the National Democracy, of the Old Dominion, will preserve the organization of the party untarnished by any coalition with the sectional and disunion faction supporting the Breckinridge, Yancey and Rhett ticket. These men and their representatives, were declared to be outside of the party at Baltimore, and we hope no effort will be made to get them back. The people will rally to our standard sooner or later, and leave these disorganizers where they have ever mostly been, at home.