Democratic Sentinel, Volume 6, Number 14, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 May 1882 — A Fraud of the Last Campaign. [ARTICLE]

A Fraud of the Last Campaign.

One of the still-remembered features of the last Presidential campaign was the Okolona States, a newspaper, socalled, which was published in Okolona, Mississippi. It had no merit. It displayed neither genius nor talent. It was notorious only upon two grounds. The first was its indecent persistence in keeping alive the sectional spirit and appealing to the worst passions and prejudices of the Southern people. The second ground was the irrational and meaningless but grotesque subdivision of its vituperations into short jerky lines which gave the columns the appearance of having been struck by lightning. This paper was first heard of at the North through the quotations from it iu Republican newspapers. The suspicion was at once excited that it was inspired by the Republican managers. Nobody but Republicans subscribed for it or made any use of it. It was shown, over and over again, that, in its own locality and State, the paper had no support or sympathy, and grossly misrepresented, or failed to represent, the spirit of the people. These facts strengthened the suspicion which ripened into a conviction when Kernan, the chief vituperator of the concern, transferred His affections and his depraved pencil to a paper which frankly doated the Republican colors, the Lemars (Iowa) Sentinel. We have recalled attention to this unclean bird Kernan, not because he is of any consequence, but because his persistent denial of his being a Republican hireling when he was publishing his foul travesties of Southern sentiment has brought out a statement which puts the Republican leaders themselves on denial. In the last issue of Chaff in thft city, it is distinctly charged that letters from Kernan to Don Henderson were found in the possession of the latter, and that in these letters Kernan acknowledged the receipt of money from the State Republican Committee, and inquired into the effect of what he called his * ‘ editorials ” in Michigan. We invite the attention of the Allegan Journal and the Republican State Committee to this charge. We invite the attention, also, of Senator Frye. It was he who most frequently and coarsely, in the House, “ rung in ” the Okolona States as a representative Democratic newspaper, and taunted his Southern fellow-members with entertaining the sentiments which found vent in its columns. Yet he must have known all the time that this foul sheet was a Republican instrumentality, that its utterances were ir spired by Republican partisanship and paid for with Republican money wrung by assessment from Republican officeholders. He must, have known this, because he was in all the inmost secrets of the Republican managers. Had he known it, and kept Bileuce, he would have had no special responsibility for the contemptible device ; but by his malicious attacks upon the Democracy, for offenses of which he knew them to be innocent, he made himself personally responsible—as much so as if he had paid from his own pocket the wages of the hireling Kernan. And therein he showed himself a fitting successor of that other fraud from Maine, the late Secretary Blaino. —Detroit Free Press.