Democratic Sentinel, Volume 3, Number 33, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 September 1879 — REPUBLICANISM ARRAIGNED. [ARTICLE]

REPUBLICANISM ARRAIGNED.

speech: of HON. DANIEL W. VOOBHEES, At Hamilton, Ohio. You all heard the furious outcry of the Republican press on the subject of the recent extra session of Congress. There was a simultaneous, prolonged, agonized, hysterical scream from Republican sources all over the country against the Democratic party, because we asserted our faith in the capacity of the people to govern themselves, and our determination that they should do so without let or hindrance from military power. This was the head and front of our offending, no more and no less. We were true, absolutely true, to the bed-rock principles of the constitution, while the leaders of the Republican party, as all the world knows, proclaimed on the floor of both branches of Congress doctrines so subversive of tho very life of civil liberty that the Tories of tho Revolution would have been ashamed to own them. Does this sound to some of you as an exaggerated statement made merely for political effect? If so, let us examine for a few moments the extent to which the Federal Government has already arrogated to itself the right by law to seize upon every species of local elections, control them by force, aud maufacture majorities out of minorities. Are you aware that there is now a law of Cougress, enacted by the Republican party, in full force at this hour, which assorts the control of the Federal Government and the jurisdiction of the United States courts over every election of every description that can possibly occur in any State or Territory, in any district, county, city, parish, township, school district, municipality, or other territorial subdivision, if any other can be found? Such is the fact. Federal-power-has clutched control of every voting precinct in the States and Territories. * In proof of this allow mo to read in your herring section 5,5 6 of tho Revised Statutes of the United States: - Every person who, by any unlawful means, hinders, delays, prevents or obstructs, or combines aud confederates with others to hinder, delay, prevent or obstruct, any citizen doing any act required to lie done to qualify him to vote, or from voting in any State, Territory or district, county, city, parish, township, school district, municipality or other territorial subdivision, shall be liued not less than SSOO. or be impri-ocod not less than one month, nor more than one year, or be punished by both such line and imprisonment. What kind of an election escapes the provision of this section ? It has been asserted o ver and over again, in Congress and elsewhere, by the Republican leaders and newspapers, that the power of the Federal Government has been applied only at times and places where members and delegates in Congress were chosen. This is all false, as the section just read conclusively proves. If you were holding an election for Mayor of this city, or for Councilmen in i s various wards, and one person should by any unlawful means, such, for instance, as a quarrel on the street, hinder or delay another m voting, the person so offending is, by express terms of this section, made liable to a tine of not less than SSOO, or to imprisonment not less than ono month nor more than one year, or to both such flue and imprisonment. If you were engaged in electing a Clerk, an Auditor, or Sheriff, or any other county officer of Butler county, the same insolent interference by the Federal Government is provided for by this law. You are not free from its aggressive and inquisitive power, even in the humblest details of your local affairs. -In the language of the law itself, an election in a township "or a school district is subject to the domination of Federal rule, Federal Marshals, Federal arrests and the monstrous and disproportionate punishments of Federal courts. Are you in favor of this law? Are you so poor and contemptible in your own view of yourselves that you feel the need of the restraining and penal influences of such an enactment as this ? Are you willing to admit that you can not trust yourselves; that you cannot even elect the Justices of the Peace, or the trustees of your townships, or the officers of your school districts unless tho supervision and threatening authority of the Federal Government is extended over you ? Have the American people, in fact, sunk so low as this? Have the people of Ohio consented to this servile doctrine? The leaders of the Republican party say you have; Charles Foster says you have; John Sherman says you have. They say that this usurpation against local self-government shall stand; that tnis legislative insult to you, this enactment, of distrust of your virtue and intelligence, shall remain permanently in the statutes of your country. I say it ought to be repealed, expunged, torn from the pages of the law with every circumstance of indignation ati(? abhorrence. What do you say? Do you believe in yourselves, or do you want a master ?

That is the exact issue. It is a very old one, and yet it sounds new in our times. " Those of you who think you are not competent to manage your local affairs, unless the club of the Federal Government is wielded overyour heads by United States Marshals, District Attorneys, and partisan Judges on the Federal bench, will, of course, and with entire consistency, vote the Republican ticket—vote for Foster, who has the same opinion of yon that you have of yourselves. Who do you suppose would vote with you if they were here? Every Tory of the Revolution. Not one of them believed in the natural rights of man to govern himself without a master. The odious Lord North, Prime Minister to George 111., would be a stalwart Republican in this contest, and the old imbecile King himself, if alive and a citizen of Ohio, would, on the well-known principles of his long and tyrannical reigD, be for Foster, and a strong centralized Government. If yon could resurrect from their infamous graves all those who sided with Great Britain against the principles of Jefferson in the days of the Revolution, not one would fail to sustain the high prerogative of the Government in stamping out local and popular sovereignty. If every perfidious Stuart who ever sat upon the Scottish or English thrones could be exhumed to- day, they would, on this issue, zealously support the Republican party. All such, in all ages, as have disbelieved in human freedom, and individual responsibility: all the blood-stained monsters who have cursed the earth with war to crush the aspirations of the people for home rule and civil liberty, would, if here, contribute to the campaign fund of the Republican party, subscribe for its newspapers and vote for its'candidates. All this and more would follow in the logical order of things. It was reported not long ago that a very rich man of New York, by the name of Jay Gould, blurted out his willingness and desire to pay millions for a Government cf high centralized powers; a Government not dependent upon the popular will; a Government which would govern, coerce and hold in subjection the people, instead of allowing them, according to the constitution of their fathers, to govern themselves. This was simply a somewhat indiscreet but very accurate proclamation of the spirit and purposes of the Republican party. It has the sanction of ail such leaders of that party as are without faith in man’s capacity and right to govern himself; of all such as are rich and prosperous, and desire no possibility of a change; of all retired capitalists, whose investments are eating up the mortgaged lands and labor of the people, like incurable cancers wreaking the human body. There was a hard struggle at the very beginning of our Government over this very question. There was a party then very formidable in talents, and very considerable in numbers, which had no faith in the people, and boldly declared its infidelity to popular institutions. The Republican party, with its Supervisors, its Marshals, its Commissioners, its spies, its Federal courts, and its deep distrust of the American people everywhere, in township, county and State, is the revival* of the old despotic Federal party under a different name, but with similar ideas. The circle is almost complete, and the enemies of free government in this country have almost reached the point at which they began their nefarious schemes nearly a hundred years ago. We more frequently see and hear Alexander Hamilton now quoted as an acceptable authority on the principles of government than ever before. If he could arise from his premature and bloody grave to-day he would have a following such as he never had in his lifetime. How refreshing his doctrines would new be to Jay Gould, Charles Foster and John Sherman! They are all afraid to trust the people. Hamilton was a delegate from the State of New York to the Constitutional Convention at Philadelphia in 1787. He drew up the plan of a constitution in all its details and presented it to the convention. By its provisions the Chief Executive of the United States, by whatever title known, was to hold office for life. How regal and permanent that sounds! Nine-tenths of the holders of interest-bearing Government securities, national bankers and capitalists, out of trade generally, will indorse that position now—not all of them openly—-

rather than risk their investments to a change of administration. They are fixed comfortably, and what they want is permanency. They are on top, and they want to stay there. They have the advantage of the millions below them, and they want to keep it By the plan presented by Hamilton the Senators were also to hold office for life. This was intended to create an aristocracy in the management of tho Government similar to the House of Lords in England. As to the States, and the people of the States, they were to ,be trusted with nothing. The National Executive Committee, with thejPresident, was to appoint the Governors of the various States; the Legislatures of the States "were to be permitted to enact laws, subject, however, to revision and entire repeal by Congress; and all the courts of ihe State, “for the determination of all matters of general concern,” were to be created by act of Congress. And even this vast scheme of consolidation fell short of the wishes of Hamilton and his followers, as it does now, perhaps, of the more advanced and stalwart leaders of the Republican party. Hamilton boldly stated that it by no mean's came up to his conception of a model Government. In discussing the proper executive head of a Government he said: “The English model is the only good one on this subject. The hereditary interests of the King were so interwoven with those of the nation, and his personal emoluments eo great, that he was placed above the danger of being corrupted from abroad, and at the same time was sufficiently independent and sufficiently controlled to answer the purpose of the institution at home.” In presenting his draft of a constitution, he also said, speaking of the American Senate, that it should be on the same model as the House of Lords in England, and that no temporary Senate would have “firmness to carry out its proper functions. ” These principles .of Alexander Hamilton, and of the Federal party at the formation of our Government, show the foun’ain from which have descended the principles of the so-called Republican party of our times; principles monarchical in their tendencies, repugnant to the self-respect of the people, offensive to every sentiment of manhood, and in opposition io the spirit and the letter of the constitution. 1 have heretofore foretold some tilings in the political world which have come to pass I predict now that the coming issue in tho near future is to be between the broad principles of Jefferson on the ono hand, and the monarchical doctrines of Hamilton on the other; tho latter supported by all the monopolies, banks and hoarded interest-gathering wealth in the land. Jefferson announced that he who feared to trust the people was a Tory by nature. That was his mode of describing an enemy to free government, and we are rapidly finding out now who are Tories, or enemies of free government, by the same rule.

The leaders of the Republican party insist that you ought to surrender the principle of < self-government, aud of free elections in the Nortu, in order that the bayonet may be used, according to the forms of law, at the polls in the South. For every piece of wicked aud villainous legislation, inspired by the hearts of designing men, who believed in despotism and not in the people, the South is held up and railed at as an all-sufficient cause. If the people #re to be shorn of their most sacred rights; curtailed of their froedom, and insulted in their homes, you are told that something in the South imperatively demands it. If, indeed, it was true that to govern the South we had to give up the constitution, deprive ourselves and our posterity ot its protection, our condition would be most deplorable; but I deny that any such necessity exists. We cannot, nor are we called on to, govern one part of this country one way and the other part another way. A Southern State is in this Union exactly as Ohio is. Whenever distinctions are made between States, or the people of States, the Union and the constitution are both destroyed. But you are told by the great political Pharisees of the times that the people of the different Southern States are not conducting themselves properly on certain subjects, and therefore you should cast away your own liberties in order to regulate by force their domestic affairs. You are also stimulated to this course by a constant stream of slander poured out on au entirely helpless and submissive people, a people who have submitted to every constitutional amendment, and to every other condition of reconstruction which the Government has imposed upon them. It is to the interest of the Republican party to Blander them. Every fault they have is not only set down in malice and conned by rote, but it is magnified and multiplied by all the lens power of party machinery. Au actual offenße agaiust the laws in the South, such as have happened every day and every hour since the human race began, is a sweet morsel, a delicious item, a savory paragraph, over which the Republican editor rubs his hands in keen enjoyment. A thousand murders may- and do occur in the Northern States, but how flat aud insipid they appear when dished up in our morning papers at breakfast in comparison with any act of crime, however commonplace its motive, that comes to us, hot and sensational, upon the breezes of the South! You live in a law-abiding State, as much so as any other in the Union, and more so than some of the loud-pretending States of New England; yet I doubt if there is a county in Ohio in which bicod has not been unlawfully shed in tho last twelve months. The same may be said of the great State of Indiana, and perhaps of every other Northern State. Crime is inherent in the heart of man, and it prevails every where. It is without quarantine. It penetrates every latitude, every longitude, and every climate. I hold that the people of tho North, and the people of the South, on the average of conduct and motive, are neither better nor worse than each other; alid, in this opinion, the statistics of crime, in proportion to population, will amply sustain' me. The trouble, however, is that the leaders and newspapers of a powerful party in the North are deeply interested in making you believe the Southern people are worse than they are. When actual offenses do not occur frequently enough to answer the purposes of an approaching election, fictitious ones are manufactured for the occasion. Recently two prominent Democrats in Mississippi, both candidates for office, became involved in trouble and Mr. Dixon was shot and killed by Mr. Barksdale. This is a I deplorable event, and I sincerely hope that the survivor will be punished, if he took the life of his adversary without cause. But is a homicide of this kiud so great a novelty to the Northern mind that we are to bo thrown into convulsions ou its account ? About three-quar-ters of a century ago there was a very uoted homicide in the streets of BostoD. It grew out of a political quarrel iu which Mr. Selfridgo, a Federalist, killed Mr. Austin, a Democrat, and from that time to this more than twice ten thousand cases of killing have been occasioned in tho Northern States alone by political feeling and animosity. There is hardly a man in my presence who era not recall one in his own recollection. Yet such events have caused but brief comment, for the reason that heretofore no political party has been so debased as to thrive on crime, fatten on murder, and hence been interested in proclaiming its prevalence where it did exist, and iu forging its calendar wherfl it did not. But a few days since I saw in a leading Republican paper of your State the following jubilant announcement: “The best Rennblican speech of the campaign thus far—the shooting of Dixoa, ‘ in Mississippi” That editor wants- any number more such Republican speeches made in this and subsequent campaigns. He wants moro killings to take place in the Southern States. It matters not on what provocation a man is killed south of the Potomac and the Ohio rivers, every such item will be so much party capital to that editor; he will make suicide from financial embarrassment a political murder. And when actual murder runs short he will supply the political market; he will meet the demand; he will kill them himself; he will transform himself inio a monster of murder on paper, for the sake of party success at the approaching elections. I once heard it said that iu whatever direction a man’s interests lay there you ought to look for his tracks. This is certainly a safe rule by which to judge a political party. The Republican party is the only party on earth whose interests are advanced by riot, violence, disorder, resistance to law. bloodshed, and murder in the South, and I therefore charge that how, as heretofore, iu the supremacy of carpetbagiem, every plan, scheme, prayer’ hope, and purpose of that party is on the side of lawlessness and crime in the South; on the side of their own manifest gain, if they can thus inflame the Northern mind. Would you believe a witness under oath in one of your courts on a question of contractor damage, if he was as much interested on ono side of the case as the Republican leaders and newspapers are iu making you believe that the people of tho South are a horde of savages, who need military force constantly at their throats? Ido not think you would.