negro wenches of Shelby, Davidson,
Fayette, Sumner and Rutherford counties_." He made a real, stirring
abolition appeal to the poor, and non-slaveholding portion of the crowd,
which was in the proportion of _ten to one_ of that county, to array
them against the rich, and especially against the owners of large
numbers of slaves. He told them that these Negro wenches belonged to the
lordly slaveholders of Middle and West Tennessee, and that as our
Constitution now is, these wenches were placed on an _equality_ with the
fair daughters and virtuous wives of laboring men. On this ground he
advocated his infamous amendment to the Constitution, which would
incorporate his "White Basis" scheme!

This is a rank Abolition measure, and fraught with more danger to the
South than any thing proposed by the whole brood of Abolitionists, Free
Soilers, and Black Republicans at the North. Already the South is weak
enough, and not at all able to vote with the North in our National
Legislature. The effect of this scheme is to deprive the South of
one-third of her strength in Congress. Not only is this the effect, but
it is the design of the mover. We hold that Johnson is a Free Soiler,
and has been for years. It is stated by his Northern Democratic friends,
that when he quit Congress, he came home to run for Governor--with a
determination, if defeated, to remove to some of the Northwestern
States, and take a new start! Had he been defeated by Maj. Henry in
1853, he would now be a Black Republican in one of the Free States,
running for office! And yet the propagator of this infamous Abolition
doctrine of a "White Basis" representation--this demagogue who arrays
the poor against slaveholders, is the man for the ultra guardians of the
slave interests of the South! A man who would not own negroes when he
could, but loaned his money out at interest, and left his wife and
daughters to do their own work--a man who is at heart and in his
doctrines a rank Free Soiler--a man who has only remained in the South
to _experiment_ upon office-seeking! This is the man that Georgia,
Alabama, Virginia, Mississippi, and Carolinas, rejoiced to see elected
Governor of a Southern slave State!

It was seeing the position of Johnson on this question that induced the
"_Democratic Herald_" in Ohio, in June, 1855, thus to notice our race
for Governor:

"TENNESSEE.--An animated contest is going on in this good old
Democratic State for Governor, and the la