Democratic Sentinel, Volume 3, Number 19, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 June 1879 — The Republican Platform for 1880. [ARTICLE]

The Republican Platform for 1880.

The truth of the prov erb that politics makes strange bedfellows was well illustrated recently when the Hon. John B. Haskin, the freest from political complications of all our anti-Tammany leaders, opened a correspondence with John Sherman, by means of which the latter formally announced himself as a candidate for President. He took that occasion also to define what he calls “the trjje issue for 1880.” His platform is a revival of sectional hate, sweetened with cant phrases, as follows: What I would aspire to in case public opinion should decide to make me a candidate for President would be to unite in co-operation with the Republican party all the national elements of the country that contributed to or aided in any way in the successful vindication of national authority during the war. I would not do this for the purpose of irritating the South or oppressing them in any way, but to assert and maintain the supremacy of the national authority to the full extent of all the power conferred by the constitution.

Stripped of its disguises, the plain meaning of this programme, which has now become the leading idea of the Republican party, is to wipe out State lines entirely, to divest the States of the rights secured by the constitution, and, in place of a union of States and people,' to establish a consolidated government, in itself the first step toward an imperial republic. The whole line of policy of the Republicans since the civil war has been in this direction. All the political legislation, beginning with reconstruction, has exhibited the same spirit. The election laws, the jurors’ test oaths, and the use of the army to overthrow State Governments, to make Legislatures to order, and to consummate the Presidential fraud, are conspicuous examples of a systematic scheme to destroy the constitutional rights of the States, and to subordinate their local and rightful authority to the arbitrary will of the Executive. Hence the tenacity with which the Republican leaders cling to the use of the army at the polls, and to Davenport’s invention for depriving naturalized citizens of their votes. Give them an army of Supervisors and Deputy Marshals, who may receive SSO each for ten days’ service, with power to make arrests without process t on the eve of an election, and who may steal the papers on which thousands of votes depend, and the way to success is easy. In 1870 thousands of troops and two ships of war were ordered to this city to overawe our people, and thus to control the election. But for the prompt decision of the local authorities we might soon have had repeated here the outrages that were perpetrated in Louisiana, South Carolina, and other States. The experiment failed, because Grant did not dare to rouse the sleeping lion at the North. In 1878 the same party resorted to anotner process, more insidious, but none the Jess an invasion of the jurisdiction and authority of the State. . The issue made up by John Sherman was adopted by the Republican Convention of Ohio, and will doubtless be followed elsewhere. In the midst of bankruptcy and distress, with millions of idle hands and the people crying out for relief, the leaders of this party have nothing better to offer in the way of statesmanship than a renewal of animosity between the North and the South, and a revival of the passions that were supposed to be buried with the Rebellion. The laws generally are obeyed in every part of the Union. The people, North and South, crave for peace and for an end of sectional agitation. The condition of public affairs is sufficiently bad, without the aggravation of an element which disheartens effort and throws backward every advance toward improvement. For fourteen years the same cry, in a variety of forms, has been renewed, and it remains to be seen with what effect it can be renewed now.— New York Sun.