Democratic Sentinel, Volume 4, Number 22, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 July 1880 — GARFIELD’S NEIGHBORS. [ARTICLE]

GARFIELD’S NEIGHBORS.

What They Think of Hi* Record— An Incident of 1876. The Buffalo Courier recalls the fact that the independent Republicans of Garfield’s Congressional district held a mass-meeting at Warren, Sept. 6, 1876, and adopted the following stinging resolution : Resolved, That it is useless and hypocritical for any political party to declare for reform in its platform, papers, and public addresses, while it insists on returning to high official place and power men who have been notoriously connected with the very schemes and fraud which render reform necessary and urgent; that there is no other man to-day officially connected with the administration of the National Government against whom are justly preferred more and graver charges of corruption than are publicly made and abundantly sustained against James A. Garfield, the present representative of this Congressional district, and the nominee of the. Republican Convention for re-election. That since he first entered Congress to this day there is scarcely an instance in which rings and monopolies have been arrayed against the interests of the people that he has been found active in speech or vote upon the side of the latter, but in almost every case he has been the ready champion of the rings and monopolies.

That wo especially cliargo him with venality and cowardice in ]>ermitting Benjamin F. Butler to attach to. the appropriation hill of 1873 that evcr-to-bc-remembcrcd infamy, the salary steal, and in speaking and voting for that measure upon its final passage. That we further arraign and denounce him for his corrupt connection with the Credit Mobilier, for his false denials thereof before his constituents, for his perjured denial thereof before a committee of Congress, for fraud upon his constituents in circulating among them a pamphlet purporting to set forth the finding of said committee and the evidence against him, when, in fact, material portions thereof were omitted and garbled. That we further arraign and charge him with corrupt bribery in selling his official influence as Chairman of the Conunitteo on Appropriations for £5,000 to the DeGolyer pavement ring, to aid said ring in imposing upon the people of the District of Columbia a pavement which is almost worthless at a price tliree times its cost, %nd in procuring a contract to i rocuro which it corruptly paid $97,000 for “ influence selling his influence in a matter that involved no question of law uj)on *tho shallow pretext that hr. was acting as a lawyer ; selling his influence in a manner so palpable and clear as to he so found and declared by an impartial and competent. court upon an issue soleninty tried. That we arraign him for gross dereliction of duty as a member of Congress in failing to bring to light and expose the corruption and abuse in the sale of post traderships, for which the late Secretary Belknap wa s impeached when the same was brought to liis knowledge by Gen. Hazen, in 1872, and can only account for it upon the supposition that his manhood was debauched by the corruption funds then by him just received arid in his own purse. That neither groat ability and experience nor eloquent partisan discussion of the dead issues of the late civil war will excuse or justify past dishonesty and corruption, or answer as a'guarantee of integrity and purity for the future. That, believing these statements in the foregoing resolutions set forth, wo can not, without stultifying our manhood and debasing our self-respect, support at the polls the nominee of the Republican Convention of this district for re-election, nor can we, without surrendering our rights as electors and citizens, sit silently by and see a man so unworthy again sent to represent you in the National Legislature. That, strong to the conviction of right, we call upon the electors of this district, irrespective of former or present party attachment, who desire honest government, to unite with us in an earnest, faithful effort to defeat the re-elec-tion of Gen Garfield and elect in liis stead’ an honest, rehable man.