Democratic Sentinel, Volume 4, Number 28, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 August 1880 — JUDGE STALLO’S LETTER. [ARTICLE]

JUDGE STALLO’S LETTER.

A German Jurist’s Hensons for Supporting- Hancock. The following letter from Judge Stallo, of Cincinnati, the most eminent and most cultured German in the United States will bear to reprint. Judge Stallo, is an old Republican, and, though not as famous as an orator as Carl Scliurz, has a stronger hold upon the hearts and affections of his countrymen than Carl has. The letter will bear reading carefully, and more than once : My Dear Sir : I cannot attend your ratification meeting. But you may savfor me that I regard the nomination of Hancock and English as of good omen for tho republic, and sincerely hope and trust that this nomination will he ratified at the ['.oils by an overwhelming majority. You are aware that for mqny years—from 1856 to 1872 —I acted with tho Republican party. Bit the very purposes for which that party was founded now demand, as it seems to mo, that the men who have control'cd it, and through it the Government, during the last fifteen years shall l;e dislodged from power. Tho persistent usurpation by the National Government of powers beyond its constitutional sphere, and its conversion into an instrumentality of robbery and oppression, are not. in niv judgment, conducive to the maintenance of its supremacy within its constitutional limit*. I do not think that respect for and obedience to this Government can bo enforced by using it to foster monopolies or to subsidize private enterprises at public expense. Moreover, I find it difficult to believe that the equalcivil and political rights of our citizens and tho purity of our elections are to bo secured by placing the ballot box under the exclusive control of the party in power—even if this control be not immediately exercised by ruffians, hired for the declared purSose of suppressing adverse majorities—or by le methods countenanced and promoted bv Gen. Garfield after the last Presidential election in Louisiana. And I am wholly unable to understand that the appointment of Madison Welts and his compeers to office as a reward for the most infamous political crime recordel in the annals of our country; or tho attempt to place Chester A. Arthur in tlm chair of tho Senate, afford very striking evidence of a sincere purpose to reform and purify the Government' service. Whether or not the Demo ratic party will make a worthy use of the opportunities ‘which the control of the Government affords remains to be seen. For tho present it is enough to say that I very much prefe r the platform and its nominees to ttie platform and nominees of the Republicans. The Republican platform (which is, of course, to he interpreted in the Republican nominations), so far as it is more than mere senseless fustian and rodomontade, is simply an audacious sneer at public morality ; and the Republican candidates appear to have been chosen for the express purpose of compelling the voters of the Republican party distinctly to indorse and approve the iniquities which have driven so many of its members from its ranks. Or in what other sense is James A. Garfield offered to us as the representative of Republican detestation of bribery and corruption, and Chester A. Arthur as an index of Republican enthusiasm and civil-service reform ! The Democratic platform on ttie other hand is, in the main, an accurate statement of my political creed, and, if your party will henceforth live up to it more faithfully than has been its wont in the sad days of its degeneracy and confusion, I shall feel proud to be enrolled among its members. Of the Democratic nominees it is hardly necessary to say that they command the respect, if not the admiration, even of their political antagonists. Mr. English is distinguished by tho courage with which he has stood up with and against his party for his convictions. And what American is there, native or adopted, Republican or Democrat, whoso eyes do not glisten when he Foks np to Hancock, the intrepid soldier, the patriotic champion of the indissolubility of the Union, the man without fear and without reproach, the citizen who is illustrious, not only by his public services, but by the unsullied purity of his life, whom 1, for one, honor even more for his fearless vindication of the principles on which the American Union is founded than for his heroic defense of the Union itself. The nomination of Gen. Hancock, however, is not only fit as a grateful recognition of his merits, but is peculiarly auspicious in view of the exigencies of the time. It is the most trustworthy assurance that the results of the late war are at least as safe in tho keeping of Democratic as in that of a Republican administration. And, what is equally important, it is an augury of the restoration of peace and good will among all the citizens of (his Union. The men of the South, who once bore arms against the Union, have not only laid them down, but they have renewed their allegiance to our common country with demonstrations of affection whose very sadness is the best proof of their sincerity. They have been for years struggling against the disorders necessarily consequent upon the complete subversion of their social and industrial system and the misfortunes entailed upon them by the war, misfortunes which certainly have not been alleviated by the practices of a majority of the men who came to the Southern States as the agents and representatives of the Republican party. And I cannot conceive anything more despicable than the attempt of certain Republican politicians who aspire to the highest honors and trusts of the republic to fabricate partisan capital by a constant reference to the inevitable incidents to the reorganization of our Southern communities as evidence of the continued disloyalty of the whole Southern people. With the election of Hancock all this will come to a speedy end. The insane vociferations about a “ solid Bouth ” will be silenced, and I am not without hope that at the Presidential election in 1884 we shall have two parties at the South as well as at the North whose lines of division are no longer the line of color or of race. Truly

yours, Hon. John F. Follett.

J. B. STALLO.