Union Meeting in Marietta - Republican Impudence

The Marietta Republican, January 25, 1861

Marietta, O. Jan. 14.

To the Editor of the Enquirer:

Below I give you the proceedings of what purports to have been a Union meeting but came about as near that as South Carolina does to being loyal.  It having been announced through the papers that such a meeting would be held on Tuesday last, the Court house was crowded to its utmost capacity by our citizens and those of Wood County, Virginia.

A Committee on Resolutions having been appointed, the meeting adjourned to meet at ten o'clock on Saturday, having first ordered that an invitation be extended to the citizens of Wood County, and also one to General Jackson, of Parkersburg, to be present and address the meeting.

The appointed day came, and with it our neighbors from the opposite side of the Ohio, when the first object that met their astonished gaze was a Lincoln and Hamlin flag, suspended from the joint offices of the collector and Resident Engineer of the Muskingum improvements.  Such an exhibition on such an occasion was a deliberate insult to our Virginia brethren, and was undoubtedly intended as such.  Excuse the digression.  The meeting having been called to order by His Honor the Mayor, the Committee on Resolutions reported the following, which Davis Green moved be adopted serivatim:

[The preamble and the first seven resolutions here follow: but as we gave them last week, we omit them.  We give the balance of the communication.]

A motion to strike out the seventh resolution and insert the Crittenden or border States resolutions was strongly opposed by Davis Green, Melvin Clarke, D. C. Skinner and Douglas Putnam, and advocated by Hon. Arius Nye and Hon. C. F. Buell, but was finally lost, because the Republican element in the meeting was determined that nothing which was opposed by Green should pass affirmatively.  Several conservitive amendments were also negatived from the same cause.

VIII.  "We cordially approve the resolution passed by the House of Representatives indorsing the conduct of Major Anderson in Charleston Harbor and the present course of the Administration toward the Seceders."

This resolution Green moved the House to take special attention, but, finding it getting too warm, concluded to quietly withdraw it.

IX.  "It is our deliberate and abiding opinion that our greatest prosperity and success as a nation, and our hopes of happiness and security in the future, depend upon the preservation of the Union as it is."

This, then, embodies the action of the so-called Union meeting.

The following, offered by Colonel McCormick, was opposed by Green, and defeated:

"Resolved, If the Territories be divided on the line of the Missouri Compromise, that the provision ought to be incorporated in the Constitution."

From the foregoing it will be seen that Davis Green occupied the most prominent part in the meeting, and that, too, after having once refused to sign the call, hooted at the idea of such a demonstration, and finally signing it under an implied protest.

May the day be far distant when our city shall be again disgraced by such a Union meeting.

G.

P.S.  I have just learned that the Marietta and Cincinnati Railroad Company, who so eagerly run half-fare trains for Republican Conventions during the campaign, refused to extend the same courtesy to the aforesaid so-called Union meeting.