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action or later. Please see Debugging in WordPress for more information. (This message was added in version 6.7.0.) in /home/goodspeedhist/public_html/wp-includes/functions.php on line 6114This article is a follow-up to the Democratic Club of Delaware Township<\/a>, published last spring.<\/p>\n The previous article described the Club\u201a\u00c4\u00f4s principles and resolutions, reflecting the alarm felt by Hunterdon Democrats at the war measures taken by President Lincoln. The article was published in the Hunterdon Historical Newsletter.1<\/a><\/sup> But because of length restrictions, short biographies of the club\u201a\u00c4\u00f4s officers had to be postponed to a future newsletter.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Many of my recent Civil War-related articles have described the very conservative views of Hunterdon County\u201a\u00c4\u00f4s Democrats. In this article, I want to learn about what the party leaders were like, but I also want to consider what men on the other side of the political spectrum were also like, that is\u201a\u00c4\u00eepeople who counted themselves supporters of the administration, if not actual Republicans.<\/p>\n Members of the Democratic Party in Hunterdon County, and in fact in most of New Jersey, were greatly distressed by the policies of Lincoln\u201a\u00c4\u00f4s administration. Many felt that going to war to end secession was a mistake, and that war-time measures were intolerable. Some members of the Party expressed themselves with great vehemence, to such an extent that today, now that Lincoln has been recognized as a great president, their opinions come as something of a shock. Especially when they argued that black people, and especially slaves, were not equal to whites and never could be, in intelligence or in the ability to act as citizens in a democracy. These Democrats were especially alarmed by the notion that freed slaves would flood the labor markets of the North and put many white laborers out of work.<\/p>\n The initial officers of the club were listed on the first page of their booklet. The By-Laws required that there be one president and as many vice-presidents as there were school districts serving the township of Delaware. It is interesting that they were identified by school districts, but as you will see, the vice presidents did not always reside in the school district they represented.<\/p>\n About a year previous to the organization of the Delaware Township Democrats, a meeting was held in Sergeantsville on July 30, 1862 for the purpose of raising money to pay for volunteers for the draft.2<\/a><\/sup> This sort of thing was permitted, and many towns did just that\u201a\u00c4\u00eereplace draftees with men who were willing to fight in their stead, for a fee. The men who signed up to raise these funds were also listed by school district, and I find it interesting that not one of them were officers in the Delaware Twp. Democratic Club.<\/p>\n