Democratic Sentinel, Volume 9, Number 32, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 September 1885 — OPENING THE OHIO CAMPAIGN. [ARTICLE]

OPENING THE OHIO CAMPAIGN.

Indianapolis Sentinel: Senator John Sherman opened the campaign in Ohio on the Republican side at Mi Gilead on Wednesday. The Sentinel has not space for the full text of his speech, but will briefly outline and comment upon the more important points. Senate v She 1 man reviewed the history -mplisliments of the Re- ». 1 party, from Lincoln’s as* emit to the Presidency until its o hra w last fall; but he mainly dwelt upon its war record. He raised the bloody shirt aloft and waved it vigorousl . Of course he lamented the fact that two of our Cabinet officers are ex-Confeder-ates. A spirit of generosity never moved John Sherman. He is cold as an iceberg, and would relentlessly grind the south under his heel were it in his power. The magnanimity which characterized General Grant is foreign to every element of John Sherman’s composition. He would be a ruler of the Nero type and hold in abject slavery those who had once deviated from the path and policy which had been his. That part of the senator’s speech relating to ex-Confeder-ates and the south are the comments of a demagogue —one who is a tyrant at heart and only lacks opportunities to be so in practice. The fact that the south is solidly Democratic is the greatest hobgoblin in Sherman’s range of vision. Of course he claims it is through Democratic oppression of the freedmen that this state of affairs has been brought about. He ascribes it all to intimidation as follows: “And yet to-day the Republican party is faced by a solid south, in which the negro is deprived, substantially, of all his political rights by open violence or by frauds as mean as any that have been committed by penitentiary convicts, and as openly and boldly done as any highway robbery. By this system and by the acquiesence of a few northern states, the men who led in the civil war have been reel ced to power, and hope, practically, to reverse all the results of the war. This is the spectre that now haunts American politics, and may make it just as vital and necessary to appeal to the northern states to unite again against this evil, not so open and arrogant as slavery, but more dangerous and equally unjust. The question then was the slavery of the black man. Now tl question is the equa'ity of the white ipan, whether a southern man in Mississippi may, by depr vh g a majority of the legal vote 1 the state of their right 4 T , ' exercis»twice the political power of a white man in the north, where the franchise is free and open and equal to all. “When this subject is pressed we are sometimes met with denial, but in the face of proofs so conclusive* spread upon the public records and in the public journals and substantially admitted over and over again in all the southern states where the negroes are in majority they are either not permitted o vote or he returns are changed.” That John Sherman can prove bulldozing is practiced at the polls in Mississippi we brand as “utterly and abominably false in every statement and in every implication.”— The writer has lived moved and had his being in Mississippi, and circulated freely among the whites and

blacks; and he knows from observation and inquiry that the colored vote in that state is about equally divided where the blacks cast their ballots at all. Since the disappearance of the carpet-bag rule they have learned that their old masters are their best friends, and will govern them far better than was their experience under reconstruction days, when carpet-bag Republicans oppressed the people, robbed the treasuries by every conceivable means of outrageous fraud, paralyzed trade and industry and ran up the rate of taxation t S7O per sl,ooo valuation, thus literally bankrupting the people and the state. Since they have thrown off this galling yoke which Republicans gave them, the southern people have taken a new lease of life, as it were. Prosperity has set in decidedly, until a nev era for the south has brightly dawned. The freedmen accept the new con- ition of things with a feeling of gratitude toward the ptrty which has relieved them of the utter poverty Republican rule brought upon them. ,) ohn Sherman is one of the survivors who was implicated in the Raud of ’76. Could he have had his way, the southern states would still be in the hands of Republican satraps, who, by holding the reins of the several state governments, would at this day be enabled to maintain the grip of their party upon the National Administration. In that case does anybody imagine that the south would be on the road to prosperity as it is to-day? No, indeed! And the colored people know it full well. The whole truth in a nut-shell is, that the colored race have tired of twen-ty-five years of Republican misrule, and haif of them are supporting the Democratic tickets. The senator is full of bitterness toward the south, and does not want the country peacefully united. He says: “I have seen many signs of a disposition to waive all the glorious results of the war, to make no difference between the blue and the gray, to revive again the doctrines of secession and state rights taught before the war. The tendency of the Democratic party is all that way. Ido not question the patriotism of my Democratic neighbors here in Ohio, but we know by old experience they follow the leaders of their parfy. The governing force of that party is with the south as in the days of Buchanan.” The people of this reunited country can not be stirred by that old battle-cry which was hushed at Appomatox There is now no more loyal section of the Union than the states which twenty years ago laid down their arms and surrendered. Sh rman does not like Lamar and Garland, but is more than willing to join hands and issues with that renegade scamp, Mahone, and his contemptible colleague, Riddleberger. It makes all the difference in the world on which side of the political fence ex-Rebels now stand. If a Repullican, he is a good fellow; if a Democrat, is a —bad devil! The senator has much to say euloghUc of the Republican management of the Treasury. He himself had a finger in themanir)iTations of that branch of the service, a (J there is not in this country an abler hand at covering up ugly tracks than is John Sherman. Especially is this true regarding finances. In his public life, at a bare living salary, he has accumulated millions of dollarr, where and how very few know. It is a sliglit-of-hand trick he is an adept in.— People know that he is vastly rich; they also know that he has been for many years in public life, and they feel assured that his gains have not been earned by the sweat of his brow. The senator admits that in our President we have at the head of this Government an executive of the right stripe, and grudgingly he pays him a compliment thus: “I acknowledge the good intentions of Mr. Cleveland, but he

knows as well as I do that the hungry and thirsty crowd who are howling for the removal of every Republican office-holder, must, in a short time, preval, and all pretence of the observance of the law will be abandoned. Every Republican now in office is an “offensive partisan,” and the most noisy and blatant of partisan.” In this he vents the wail raised by all of his party organs in the country, that most of the Republican officials must go. Of course they are “offensive partisans.”— That is what they were appointed for, and they ought to go. The senator concluded with an appeal to his hearers to support Foraker and work for the securing of “a Republican Legislature that will give you wise temperance laws.’ That feat can not be accomplished. If they get a Repulican Legislature the people of Ohio will not thereby get “wise temperance laws.” — They know the fplly of hoping for that, and can not be cajoled into voting the Republican ticket on that score any longer.

Indianapolis News, Republican: Judge Foraker, the Republican candidate for Governor of Ohio m his speech at Portsmouth, 0., for. mallv beginning his campaign yesterday took the bloody shirt chute opened by senator Sh rman in his Mt. Gilead speech, indicating that the program has been carefully laid out and deliberately entered upon. Eorak-r’s points of special emphasis, it appears by the Report, were the Chisholm affair, the Hamburg massacre, the Copiah county outrage and such like matters. The voters of Ohio are asked to regulate their state caucuses, choose their Legislature and Governor upon their opinions of these murderous things. It is an insult to common| sense. There might be, as we presume there are, no two opinions upon these things; but what has that to do with Ohio’s state government, or for the matter of that, its representation in the United States senate ? The regulation of these affairs has been handed over to Georgia and Mississippi, and whatever state just as much us it has to Indiana and Ohio, and if the bloody shirters filled the White House and both halls of Congress and all the postoffices, they could not do anything to help these matters; as they could not when these things happened while they did hold power. Wouldn’t we think the conservatives and readjusters in Virginia were a precious lot of fools if they should make their state campaign on the exclusion of a negro child from the schools of Indiana or any other outrage on rights, the regulation of which lies within the state? Yet this is t e Sherman-Foraker attitude in Ohio. Because of the Chisholm bloody murder and the Hamburg massacre, people of Ohio are asked to vote a certain way on the questions of regulating the liquor traffic and levying state taxes. If all this isn’t an insult to common intelligence it is an assumption that such a thing doesn’t exist at all in Ohio.

To the “bloody-shirtism” of senator Sherman’s speech the Boston Herald makes this savage and scathing response: The “specter that now haunts American politics,” according to this republican leader, is raised by the alleged fact that “the men who led in the civil war have have been restored to power, and hope, practically, to reverse all the results of the war.” The shortest way to meet this most monstrous perversion of the facts of the political situation is the best. If John Sherman and his party did not wish or intend that the white people of the south should resume their duties and meet their responsibilities as citizens, why did they force them to remain in the Union? If they considered that joining the republican party, or acquiescing forever in any rule which it might see fit to impose upon the states of

the south, were essential conditions of the reconstruction of the Union, why did they not enact them in an amendment to the Constitution ?- It is stultifying puerility for Mr. Sherman to cry out against the former rebels for performing the duties and claiming the rights of citizens in holding office, when they were compelled by force of arms to resume their citizenship and had their disabilities removed by a republican Congress, for the express .purpose of opening the way to the service of which the senator from Ohio now complains. Either the war was a bloody farce or every ex-Confederate now in the service of the nation has just as good a right to b there as John Sherman lias. Th* stupendous stultification of the republican lender is increased by the fact that his own party C as placed in office, and is now in alliance with, some of the worst and meanest of the Confederates, while the democrats have brought forward, as a rule, the best and ablest of them.