Democratic Sentinel, Volume 3, Number 3, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 February 1879 — Identifying Themselves with Robeson. [ARTICLE]

Identifying Themselves with Robeson.

The Republican leaders have heretofore boastfully referred to the Democratic habit of blundering as their surest reliance for success, and they are not altogether without reason for this confidence. But, if recent events furnish any indication for the future, the tables are likely to be turned, and. the Democrats may commend the poisoned chalice to the lips of their opponents. The Republicans of the House of Representatives have put themselves on record as sustaining the gross corruption and plunder of Secor Robeson and his confederates. First, Mr. Conger and Mr. Hale quickly objected to a report being made by the Naval Committee, though Mr. Whitthorne proposed that the views of the minority should have an equal hearing with those of the majority. Then, on Monday last, when he moved to print the report, with the resolutions and the dissenting opinions of the minority, and to fix a day for their consideration, the same parliamentary tactics were renewed. But on this latter occasion the yeas and nays were called, and the record shows that every Republican present or paired was in favor of suppressing the report and testimony, and thus, to the extent of his ability, was in favor of sustaining Secor Robeson’s shameless venality while Secretary of the Navy. A party which, through its leaders and its recognized organs, assumes such a responsibility as this must be indifferent to public opinion and reckless as to cbnsequences. No man has ever held high office in this country about whose character and conduct there is a more confirmed conviction, irrespective of party, than there is about Secor Robeson, so called from one of the early jobs with which he was proven to have jjeen connected. The testimony before the different investigations, much of it furnished by his own correspondence and telegrams, is overwhelming as to his guilty collusion in all forms of jobbery. He demoralized the service, disgraced the department, and managed, in less than eight years, to destroy the navy and leave nothing but rotten hulks and rusted machinery to represent the enormous appropriations voted by Republican Congresses. This is a crime for which the Republicans will be held answerable. They took out of the treasury first and last, including the valuable mate: ial which Robeson bartered away to favored contractors as old iron, more than $225,000,000, and when Robeson went out of the department he left it encumbered with debts, with illegal contracts for millions made while holding over temporarily under Hayes, and with a record of rascality such as neve r disnonored it before. In defending Robeson the Republican leaders, like Hale, Conger, and the rest of them, identify themselves with his plundering career. —New York Sun.