Democratic Sentinel, Volume 7, Number 30, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 August 1883 — THE CONTEST OF 1880. [ARTICLE]

THE CONTEST OF 1880.

DORSEY’S STARTLING DEVELOPMENTS. A SORROWFUL SUBJECT FOR THE CONSIDERATION OF THOUGHTFUL AMERICAN CITIZENS. Dubuque (la.) Herald: The story of the late presidential election furnished by *-route Dorsey to the New York Sun, must be regarded as a most important contribution to the political history of our time. The people have no concern whatever as to Mr. Dorsey’s motives ,in making this very instructive exposure, whether they are bad, or good, revengeful or otherwise, all that the public ia interested in is the historical value of the story, is it true or false? At the very start Mr. Dorsey must understand that his unsupported word will not go very far with the American people. His statements must be corroborated by direct or circumstantial evidence amounting to proof, and when they are, the force of them as history cannot be parried by assailing his motives, nor by that shield to political corruption which has proved so useful heretof late, the “memory of Garfield.” The shocking fate of Garfield, and the bravery with which he bore his suffering have given him a lasting place in the sympathy and affection of his countrymen, but they cannot be permitted to falsify history,or suppress it. The record of our politics cannot be hidden from the world under the plea that if shown it might involve the public and private character of the dead president. We have a right to know all that can be known of the politicians of 1880 and their methods, even if that knowledge reveals to us some blemishes on the fair fame of the dead. “This is an attack upon the martyred president and therefore unworthy of any attention,” will be the formula by which the partisan press will seek to evade the condemnation contained in the startling revelation, and already that unreliable newspaper, and unfair disputant, the Chicago Tribune, has sounded the ‘keynote’ to that effect, and we may expect the smaller organs to pipe to that note. “Assuming,” says the Tribune, “that not many people cared to read his long and infamous document (which was printed in the second edition of Monday’s Tribune as part of the news of tho day) we may state its purport in a few words.” This sentence is proof of the Tribune’s dishonesty. It is the well known habit of editors, when five or six columns oi matter come along that “not many people care to read” to hustle the boys and get out an extra, or second edition, containing the stuff that nobody cares to read. That’s the way we always do. And to give emphasis to this practice, the Tribune not only published this four column document in a second edition of Monday’s paper, but also in the regular edition of Tuesday. The business enterprise of the . Tribune was not strong enough to overcome its inherent duplicity. Pretending to print the “long and infamous document,” it had the low cunning to cut out of it whatever it considered very damaging to General Garfield, or Jay Gould, or Stanley Matthews, or anybody else whom it wished to save. It thus displayed its faithless character as a newspaper, and its insane partisanship. The whole of the story about the bargain with Jay Gould for the appointment of a judge of the Supreme Court is suppressed, and also much other matter of a damaging character,not to the dead alone, but to the living. In suppressing the shameful sto-

| ry of the sale of a judgeship to Jay Gould, the Tribune shows conclusively that it believes the story to be true. With the buying and selling, the broken promises, the intrigues and treacheries of the cabinet making time between the election and the 4th of March,the public will not trouble themselves much, but the story of the campaign is the most dramatic in American history, excepting only the thrilling tale of the great battles of the war. It reveals a political degradation to which the American people never dreamed they could possibly descend; it shows that our greatest men are cynics as to fiublic virtue, and don’t beieve in it at all; it shows that the greatest capitalists of the country have no patriotism, and that government to them is simply “business.” Their mecenary love of country was displayed in that hard bargain , with Garfield at the Fifth Av- 1 enue hotel, when they agreed to elect him president on his i promise to put the U. S. treasury under their control, and refund the national debt in ‘ their interest. All our ques-! tionable methods of campaigning, our assessments and voluntary contributions, the sale of offices, the gifts of patronage, all dwarf themselves to v nothing in comparison with this colossal bargain. It is impossible to withhold a cer-: tain admiration for the daring genius that contrived it, the sublime audacity of making the public debt a vast corruption fund to defeat the will of the people at the polls. The brain, capable of such a scheme was Napoleonic in its length, and breadth, and depth, but even then, it never could have achieved it without a special training in the schools of car-pet-bagaom, where political buccaneering refined itself into a subtle potency like instinct. Dorsey had that brain, and that experience; he had nerve to correspond. Dorsey was secretary of the Republican National Committee, and his higher genius very soon controlled it. Ten dollars to one that five out of every six of our average well read politicians cannot tell the name of the man who was chairman of it. “Warwick was all in all, and powerless Edward stood like a cypher in the great account.” Dorsey i soon became chairman, secre-1 tary and all hands. '(Ob, he was the cook, and the captain bold, And the mate of the Nancy brig, And the bosun light, and the midshipmite, A d the crew of ‘he captain's gig." He took charge of the campaign, and proficiency in polit- ‘ ical grand tactics soon appear-' ed. He counted the people and found that the majority was against him. He then planned to subjugate that majority, and with remorseless courage, with unscrupulous persistency he executed his plan. When doubt and fear shook the Republican party like an ague from Garfield down, Dorsey alone was selfreliant and confident of victory. He had a sublime trust in the sordid vice of his countrymen, and relying upon that, he organized a campaign of corruption which will ever remain a monument to his genius, and his destitution of principle. Like Napoleon at Marengo, and Sheridan at Winchester, the Maine disaster in September only stimulated 1 him and roused his energies, while it threw his colleagues into panic and despair. Retreating from New England, he concentrated all his forces on the plains of Indiana; lie fought the decisive battle of October there, and won it through the omnipotence of money. —» - .■ ■ Jay Hubbell, the brilliant collector of campaign usufruct is seldom heard of any more. He went down, with other gallant saviors of the Republican party, in 1882.

Mr. Stephenson, the New York banker who (Mr. Dorsey says) disbursed all the money used in the Indiana campaign in 1880, recently confirmed all of Dorsey’s statements in regard to the matter. Mr. Stephenson went to Indiana at the urgent request of Mr. Arthur, the latter saying: “It is of the greatest personal interesto me, and the sooner you go the better.” “I told him,” says Mr. Stephenson,“that I should have to consult Judge Kelley, of our bank, first, and see if he could spaje me, and would give him an answer the next day.” Judge Kelly having given his assent, Mr. Stephenson came to Indiana. “Arrived at Indianapolis,” said Mr. Stephenson, “I found I had a responsible duty to perform.— I was obliged to stay in a back room, not well lighted, night and day to guard the money—there was a pile of it—and pay it out on orders, all of which were written. I kept these orders as vouchers, and have got them yet, and they represent every cent paid by me. It was that money that did the business in Indiana. — It was not altogether a pleasant task. I had to stay right there all the time and guard the money, much of the time being left alone, with nothing but a revolver for my protection.” Mr, Stephenson further says that the money was given out in sums ranging from a few hundred to many thousand dollars, to certain chosen leaders in the various townships of the State, who placed it where it would do the most good for the party.

In regard to Garfield s letter to Hubbell, Dorsey says: “That was not one of the mistakes of Moses, but one of Garfield’s mistakes. Among the large number of letters, touching in one way or another the campaign, that Garfield turned over to me while I was at Mentor, was one from Hubbell, requesting Garfield to ask for aid. I threw it at once into the waste basket. I told Garfield about it, and said that it ought not to be answered because it seemed that a man who wanted a written request to contribute money would probably have some use for the request. Garfield, in his anxiety and zeal, after I left Mentor fished this letter out of the packet and wrote the answer that has been published. I always thought it was harmless as it was foolish, but the public views it differently. The fact was the Republican managers wanted, money badly, and to dbtain it during the canvass, I am not sure that some of the leaders would not have run lead into silver dollar mdulds and tried to pass the counterfeit as coin current. Why, nothing was left undone to raise the fund that General Arthur thought necessary to secure the election of the ticket. We left no stone unturned We wanted money and we got it.” The Philapelphia, Pa., Press prints a letter written by President Buchanan,September 21, 1861, and never published before, in which he said: “I pursued my own steady course from the beginning. The Charleston authorities were notified over and over again, that if they attacked Fort Sumter I should consider this attack fas the commencement of a c,vil war. I need scarcely say that I agree with you in approving the active prosecution of the war by the Government; and I have never held any other language since the Confederates commenced it by the attack on Fort Sumter. It would probably have commenced early in January had the Senate confirmed my nomination of a Collector for the port of Charleston.” Lawrenceburg lias a bank failure. Speculation*.