Democratic Sentinel, Volume 1, Number 28, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 August 1877 — Decadeuce of the Republican Party. [ARTICLE]

Decadeuce of the Republican Party.

It is not only decaying, it is dying. A little more than a quarter of a century ago the great Whig orator of New England stood in Faneuil Hall, just as he and his party were on the verge of dissolution—for they died together—pleading with the Whigs of Massachusetts for the continuance of the Whig organization. The idol of New England said: “If the Whig party is disbanded, what will become of me?” The question which Daniel Webster asked, with the grave just ahead of him, is the question which some Republicau statesmen in 1877 are asking, and about it lies the secret of the opposition to the Southern policy of Mr. Hayes. The Blaines and the Mortons are among the men who are not too blind to see that the surrender of the two Southern States of South Carolina and Louisiana was the final capitulation of the Republican party. By that slender tenure alone did it hold its power. On that brittle thread hung its life. The last Southern State gone, and they well knew that the Republican party was gone forever. The sagacious Republicans whose public life or whose political convictions have been wrapped up in, or circumscribed by, the life of the Republican party, are naturally unwilling to let the party die without another struggle. The Blaines and the Mortons are each inquiring: “ What will become of me?”

On the 27th of July Senator Morton, ip Oregon, recited his bloody-shirt speech. It was the same speech, but it was pot

delivered with that zest that has characterized it for the -last ten years. He plaintively prefaced it by. saying that “we are now at a period of retrogression.” He gazed sadly on, the last remaining hope of the Republican pasty, surrendered by Hayes to the Democracy, and wailed: “We are now at a period of retrogression.” With automatic rhetoric, however, or as a reminiscence of the past, or because it has become as a sweet morsel undSr his tongue, he repeated his account of the purposes of the Democratic party. It is : 1. To pay all the rebel claims for losses during the war. 2. To pension all the rebel soldiers and their widows and orphans. 3. To pay their late owners, or their heirs, for tiieToss of all the slaves. 4. To pay tho rAbel war debt. Two weeks after Morton was thus painfully and pathetically talking about a' “period of retregressiop” on the plains of Oregon, Blaine was talking for peace on the banks of the Kennelrec, old Ben Wad 6 was growling on the shore of Lake Erie: “I suppose we must have harmony,” and a band of recalcitrant Republicans were issuing a manifesto from our State capital denouncing the abandonment of the Republican party to the enemy, and five days after Morton’s swan’s song the Republican party in Ohio had fled for salvation to a “ Bureau of Industry. ” The dissolution of the Republican party, however, is not to be hud at the door of Mr. Hayes. It was the inevitable fate of a party whose mission was ended, of an ephemeral organization that had no wholesome ideas to feed on. It was not the Southern policy of Mr. Hayes that practically brought the Republican party to an end. The work has been in progress for years. That party has been subsisting on the negro. It has been living on the war. The war and the negro could not always last. They have sustained the party twelve years. Nothing less than a miracle like that which multiplied the loaves and fishes could enable it to feed on them longer. The passions of war for a time could sweep everything before them; but all wars must end. The fate of the negro, “ tho romance of our history,” could enlist millions of hearts, but the law has done all it can for the negro, and the Republican party is become either his master or* in effect, his enemy. Its usefulness is ended, but its destruction was not accomplished by the surrender of two States to the Democratic party to which they belong. It was a longer process. “ The slow poison of corruption,” of which Stanley Matthews told us four years ago, while presiding over the Cincinnati Convention, had been doing its work. The party in its origin had but one purpose’ and for the accomplishment of that and during the first five bloody years of its career it gathered unto itself men of all beliefs, so that they agreed upon the one question. The question dead and buried, it was natural that the organization without an errand should gradually or suddenly disintegrate. It has been by superhuman exertions, by the employment of almost omnipotent agencies, by falsehood and money and the bayonet, by the use of colossal patronage, by playing with devilish skill upon the passions and prejudices of men, that the Republican party has been kept alive so long. It dies hard. Drowning, it has grasped straws, and somehow has magnified them into planks, and kept itself above water. We need only mention the common-school system, which no party opposes; the “rebel debt,” which does not exist; the “ rebel claims,” which are forbidden to be paid by the constitution; the payment for slaves, of whjch none but Republicans speak, to illustrate our meaning. Now, the paity in Ohio has grasped at a “Bureau of Industry” in the hope* of prolonging its life, and gin vain. State after State Has been" slipping away from it. Its popular majority of three-quarters of a million has beep changed in four years to an opposite majority of a quarter of a million. It &fts ; lost one branch of Congress and almost lost the other. It is entirely disbanded in several Southern States aeud helpless in all. It is a mass of wranglers in the North. The leaders are quarreling ami the followers are disaffected. Its President occupies his seat without a valid title, and is in the hands of strong men who fought the Republican party bitterly four years ago, <>and who can have little love for it now. Its administration,, under instructions from these gentlemen, has entered a plea of guilty to one grave count in the indictmdfit against if by adopting the Democratic policy. Its abuses of power have, exasperated the people whom they haVe oppressed. It is not strange, under the circumstances, that Morton should send from the Pacific slope the lament, “We, are now at a Eeriod of retrogression,” or that Blaine, y the Kennebec waters, should grimly talk of the need of “peace.” The end is at hand.— Cincinnati Enquirer.