Democratic Sentinel, Volume 6, Number 3, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 February 1882 — A Disgraceful Union. [ARTICLE]

A Disgraceful Union.

The Cincinnati Gazette looks with some concern upon the division of the Republican party. By way of advice to the fictions which threaten to nullify its strength altogether, it points to an interesting bit of history : “ He is no friend of the party or of its principles who encourages dissension. It will require a united party to succeed in 1884, as it did in 1880 and 1876.” The Republicans were barely successful in 1880, no more. If the stalwarts had persisted in their idea of being sulky, New York, and with it the Presidency, would have been lost. In 1876 the party were successful only because they were united. But what a union ! The votes went against them, and their boldest, most shameless leaders conceived the plan of changing the result by fraud. The idea took. Some of them hesitated at the unheard-of enor raity of the plan, for instance Senator Conkling and his friend Senator Jones ; but they shrank from the responsibility of upholding truth and right against the passions of their party. Zach Chandler managed the project, and Stoughton, Sherman, Garfield and all the other visiting statesmen went down to Louisiana and Florida and perfected it. Even then, if there had been any brave, outspoken Republican to condemn it, it might never have been con summated. The foulest stain ever put on a people would not have made its mark here. To the undying shame of the Republican party, it was as much of a unit in the determination to make Hayes President after Tilden had received the majority of the electoral votes as it was in voting for Hayes in the first place. With regard to the crime of 1876, the Republicans seem now to be a unit on one other point. They have no other feeling than that of disgust for the base creature they put in the White House. Zach Chandler, the chief actor in the drama, was loudest in his expressions of contempt for Hayes. When even a Republican newspaper mentions him now, it is always with a slur, showing that his true character and position are receiving only a clearer recognition. They all turn from him as a horrorstricken criminal turns with rage and loathing from the instrument with which the crime was done. The Republicans were a unit all through 1876, but now the two chief factions of the party have become so sharply defined and so hostile toward each other that our Cincinnati contemporary is alarmed for the unity of the party. It will be a fortunate thing when it is broken up. When a party is so perverted, so unflinching in its determination to keep the control of the Government, that the introduction of fraud as a party measure is not enough to break it up, but it requires the development of two ambitious and irreconcilable factions before there can come even the faintest souud of remonstrance or disapproval, that party is not worthy the support of honest, patriotic men.— New York Sun.