Democratic Sentinel, Volume 5, Number 29, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 August 1881 — Making Texas Republican. [ARTICLE]

Making Texas Republican.

The New York Time advances at somewhat startling doctrine : “ A Democratic paper in Massachusetts boasts that ‘ Texas, the most solidly Democratic State in the Union, will soon have a school fund of $100,000,000, the largest by far of any State. ’ This looks like a large estimate of the value of the public lands ; but its devotion to school purposes will destroy the boasted Democratic solidity of Texas just as soon as a new generation has been educated.” By this (says an able contemporary) we are to understand that the education to be given to the children of Texas, with the help of this splendid school fund, will make the children Republicans in their politics, and turn Texas into a Republican' State. Twenty years ago, when the Republican party stood against the extension of slavery into the new Territories, and nominated Abraham Lincoln for President, a simple, upright man, who believed in Democracy and was ready to' devote his life to the maintenance of the Union, any man might well bring his children up to be Republicans. A child could easily lie made to understand* that the extension of slavery was wroug, and that the Union was not to

be broken up because a political party hail been beaten in an election. When men believed in these principles, and could show it by voting for such a man as Lincoln, they could without Invitation or reserve instruct their children to give their support to the Republican party. But now things have changed. Slavery is gone. There is no motive of humanity that can be appealed to in favor of one party over another, and the natural relic of the war—the opposition to the solid South, which has for so long been a veil over many men’s eyes—must die out; in fact, it has died out alreadv. The country has entered upon a different era, and to make a child grow up a Republican at the present time, the oldfashioned style of education must be radically altered. He must be taught that democracy, or the rights of the people, should be curtailed; that the country is in need of a more arbitrary control than seemed good to the men who made the constitution, and, above all, he must thoroughly understand that common honesty, though necessary in the other affairs of life, affords no fundamental rule for politics. Will the extended system of public education which Texas is destined to enjoy produce such an effect as this ? We trust not. But this is by no means all. To convert the majority of the future citizens of Texas into Republicans they must be made to feel that a Republican thief is better than an honest Democrat; that a man whose weakness and corruption are notorious and indisputable must be supported without flinching if he receives a regular Republican nomination for high office; that the bad points of his record and his character must be winked at or ignored or disbelieved ; and that honest men must go to the polls and vote for a villain if his name stands on the Republican ticket, even if the opposite party puts up a candidate who merits the respect and confidence of all. And finally, after all this, when the Republican party is defeated in the election, if by any means the result can be falsified and the Repuolicans kept in power, the minds of the young must be instructed to give their approval to the act. They must stick to their party, though the majority of the whole people be in this way disfranchised. Bucli are the political ideas which the people of Texas must teach to their children if they would have them grow up Republicans. They are very simple ideas ; but, unfortunately, simplicity is not their only quality.