Democratic Sentinel, Volume 2, Number 23, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 July 1878 — LETTER FROM HON. T. F. BAYARD. [ARTICLE]

LETTER FROM HON. T. F. BAYARD.

The Delaware Senator on Free Elections, Electoral Frauds, John Sherman, Etc. * * * The political occurrences of the last two years, as they are being daily brought to light from their recesses of dishonest concealment, should teach the people of the United States the ever-recurring need of stamping with the severest condemnation everything that tends to weaken and impair the great principle of free and fair elections. The distinguishing feature—the very safe-ty-valve in our plan of Government —is the means provided, in the process of free elections, for the people to correct their errors and retrieve their political mistakes, whether by revoking misplaced trusts and punishing those who have deceived them, or changing the drift of political measures that have proved hurtful, so that, taught by experience, they may prevent the repetition of the disaster. The great issue of the immediate future is, in my judgment, the reassert ion of this idea, and the solemn and resolute determination by our countrymen that elections shall be free, shall be the actual expression of the opinions and wishes of the citizens, and that they shall be honestly and fully acquiesced in by the defeated party. See to what consequences a different course and theory have led the party called Republican at the last Presidential election, how close upon the rocks the ship of state was driven, until, thanks to the patriotic and masterly self-control which animated the Democratic party, she was rescued and rendered capable of cariying her precious freight of human happiness and hopes upon new and, let us trust, successful voyages. The underlying idea of our institutions—free choice by the people, and honest and honorable acceptance of the popular verdict as final by all parties—has been wholly disregarded and contemned by the Republican leaders ; and, to use the language of one of the most conspicuous and influential among them—Hon. John Sherman, the present Secretary of the Treasury—in a late letter to the Ohio Republican conference, “ The only threat that endangers the public weal and safety is the restoration of the Democratic party to power. ... I cannot but regard its restoration to power as the only danger that really threatens our public peace and safety.” Mr. Sherman is called a Republican, and has often held, and now holds, an office which is coupled with an oath to support the written charter of his country’s Government; yet he does not hesitate, in his partisan zeal, to make this open, defiant proclamation that everything is to be subordinated to the one idea of preventing a political organization embracing in its membership a large majority of his fel low-citizens, from again obtaining tuider law the control of the administration of the constitutional powers of their Government, which for seventy years of unbroken honor and prosperity it had exercised.

The light already thrown by Congressional investigation upon the action of Mr. Sherman and his visiting associates in Louisiana in the fall of 1876—the means and methods then resorted to, and of which they so freely availed themselves to accomplish the one great end of depriving their political opponents and the American people of the just fruits of a laborious and earnest effort by the lawful methods of popular election to obtain reform in administration and relief from local misrule so vile that it was spreading 1 ke poison from the unhappy communities, where he and his party had established and kept it throughout all the arteries of our federal system—may now be better comprehended, as they clearly appear in he characters and careers of the Andersons, the Wellses, the Kelloggs, and the Jenkses, that motley and ribald group of political miscreants, male and female, in whose hands Mr. Sherman and his party had placed the wires of low and profligate political management which has converted popular elections into what would seem a horrible farce, were it not so filled with tragical consequences. The American people have a sure remedy for every political evil in the periodical recourse to a free ballot. Leave that right unimpaired and they will retrieve their errors and correct their mistakes and folhes; but, if deprived of it, they will be reduced to the single alternative of perpetual and degrading submission to admitted wrong, or a resort to forcible resistance to rid themselves of oppression. Mr. Sherman and his allies would close the door of relief through the orderly and lawful change of rules and policies by the honest and honorable acceptance of the results of popular elections, and his brother, the General of the armies, is reported lately to have made the gratuitous but pregnant avowal, at the National Military Academy, that the army of the United States, under his command, would unhesitatingly be employed to sustain the tenure of a President, without regard to the right or justice under law of his title to the office.

The Fourth of July, 1878, and every day between that and the election day in 1880, are the fit and proper days for the American people to consider what answer should be given at the polls to such propositions—for the calm and deliberate contemplation of such ideas, so as to shape their issues in the simple integrity and manly spirit of 1776. Let them proclaim as their resolves:

1- That they will have free elections in a 1! the States, undisturbed and unawed by Federal interference, civil or military. 2. The verdict of the people rendered at the polls shall be faithfully recorded, and shall be accepted and obeyed. 3. That the men or the party who shall stand in the way of these resolves shall be withered by the wrath of an earnest and honest people, who love civil liberty asinsnrined in Republican institutions, and intend to preserve it for themselves and their posterity. The issue is not less vital than this, and until it vhall have been settled dtfiuitely in accordance with those resolves, and so unmistakably that no man sha 1 venture to question or gainsay them, all other questions, however interesting, may wisely be postponed. It is now the great essential in support of which not only every Democrat but all justminded and conservative citizens of every party must rally; and when it has been secured then we may afford to differ and array ourselves at will upon questions of political economy, whose importance I fully recognize, but which pale into insignificance before the pressing and primary questions, Shall our elections be free, and shall their results be acquiesced in and obeyed by all ? Respectfully yours,

T. F. BAYARD.