Jasper Republican, Volume 1, Number 7, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 October 1874 — The Republican Party and the South. [ARTICLE]

The Republican Party and the South.

We make the following extract from a reoent speech delivered at Springfield, Mass., by Congressman Henry L. Dawes: The first complaint that I ask yon to conaider, yon dissatisfied Republicans, is the charge against the Administration that it has not done its duty toward the South, that the condition of things in the Southern States is such to-day that the Republican party ought to be abandoned on account of it. Let us see. Abandoned for what? For the Democratic party, for there is no other. Abandon the Republican party for the Democratic, turn over, the Southern States to the Democratic party, for that is the logic erf vour complaint What is tiie complaint? Is it that the Republican party has withheld power from the white men down South and turned it over to the negroes down there and the car-pet-baggers ? I nave heard that, and that the negroes and carpet-baggers had ran riot with that power and ground down the white people there and wasted their substance. Suppose they have done it for a moment, how came they to do it? Not because the Republican party or any other withheld power from the

white people down South; the difficulty was that the Republican party extended the power, the ballot, down tnere, instead of withholding it. They never took the ballot from a whitelnan down there; every living White man, from the keeper of Andersonville all the way up to Jefferson Davis, had, from the moment they laid down thei* arms at Appomattox Court-House to this hour, the ballot just as much as they ever had. That was not the complaint It was Dot that we took the,4>allot away from them, but because we extended it to others. We made it too large, we gave it to the negroes as well. That is the complaint; wc gave it to the negro who fought the battles of the nation, who was made a citteen as

the result of the war and became entitled by the Constitution to the ballot. The negro had it, that was their complaint, and they won’t—to use the' boys’ phrase —they won’t play if the negro does. The white people of the South stayed away from the polls and let the negroes have it all their own way. The reason was that the negroes, ignorant as they were, would make such a condition of things that it would cause such a reaction here at the North, and that power would be taken away from the negroes and restored to their exclusive exercise, and therefore they stood back and let the negroes and the carpetbaggers have the control of the Government; and whatever of evil, whatever of corruption, whatever waste of the substance of the South has come from that unfortunate and ignorant rule of these negroes, has come from the fact that the white man would not partici-

pate with them in a common government extended over them by the Constitution of tfie United Btates. That is all there is to-day; that is the whole of it. When they fbund that it didn’t react at the North, when they found that the whole extent of it was a few people gathered at Cincinnati, who dropped like a ripe apple into the loving arms of the Democracy before they got home —see what reaction there was—then they undertook to wrest the power from the negroes and the carpetbaggers, and the consequence is the terrible condition of things at the South to-day. It is traced directly back to the whjjje people of .the South, stimulated and encouraged as they were by the hope of the return of the Democracy to power. Why, there are seventeen Confederate officers, to-aay, members of Congress, and on which side do you think they are? Did you ever hear of a Confederate Republican ? That is enough.

Theij, because you are not satisfied with the condition of things down South you propose to deliver over, bound hand and foot, these four millions of colored people to the Democracy, the Confederate officers of the Democracy in Congress assembled. You deliver the lamb over to the wolf, and the dove over to the vulture, as certain as you accomplish the legitimate result of your leaving the Republican party for that cause. Just look at the effect it has upon these men. And when the cry came up this summer from the poor, defenseless colored man of the South that he was being hunted and murdered, and he went to his cabin at night trembling for the morrow, every one of these independent and Democratic journals at the North shouted derision at the cry of these poor men for help. Let me just read what I cut, a week ago, out of an independent journal of the North that had in years past, under another management, fought valiantly for the rights of the humblest and poorest man, though his face was as black as the heart of him who is now hunting his life in midnight masks and with midnight murderous weapons and outrages. The next morning after it was ascertained that the Democratic party had triumphed in Indiana and Ohio this independent journal shouts out: “The Southern-outrage business didn’t pay well in Ohio and Indiana, did it?” That is all the response that can be evoked from the breast of a man who steps out of the Republican party over night to sleep with the Democratic party that claps and applauds it now. When a colored man, a postal-car clerk, is stopped upon the train and murdered in cold blood; when Federal officers in Arkansas are compelled by force to resign their offices upon a pledge that they shall be protected in their lives, and are then brutally murdered, and it is found that the Democratic party has gone so far in this work that even the cry of their blood did not arouse them, the same independent journal yesterday cries out the “ bloody-shirt cry.” Let me read what it said yesterday: “There is a sudden calm in the Southern-outrage business, and the Republican organs are, one after another, giving their whole attention to the third-term business”— trying to turn us off on the third term. The impression seems to be that the third-term project hurt the Republicans a good deal more than the “bloody-shirt” yelling did the Democrats. Do you remember how, fifteen years ago, they cried out “ Bleeding Kansas,” and ridiculed the cry that came up to the ears of the country from the settlers upon the plkins of Kansas, and called it “Bleeding Kansas?” Does not this sound a good deal like it, “bloody-shirt” yell of murdered fellow-citi-zens, clothed by the Constitution with every ri*jht that you and I have ? Let them not attempt to turn us away with their idle talk about the third term; I will tell them where the third-term nonsense came from. It came from their allies down South, from that part of the Democratic party which has come up to the support of the party with all the sins of the rebellion upon its heart and hands. Let me read you from their newspapers what they say about it: “ The first thing Grant’s friends know they will see all the white people in the South advocating him for the third term. There is one thing certain, if it comes to be a question of more nigger or more Grant, the South will jump at the latter. All the dangers of imperialism, Cißsarism, etc., shrink into insignificance compared to the continuation of the unbearable negroism right here among us. We will risk Grant another term if he will give us a rest from the interminably irrepressible negro.” That is the voice of that party in the South without whose help the Democracy of the North is as helpless as a paralytic. That is the party at the South which, with the help of the Democracy of the North, is to choose the next Speak. er of the House of Representatives and make the next Committee upon Southern Claims and Southern Outrages, with seventeen Confederate officers there to make it out of, ready to take Grant for a third term if they thought they could seduce him to their purposes. This was before the little rebellion that was got up in New Orleans the other day. Since they found by that experiment that the line of Buchanans could not be recruited out of Republican ranks, you have heard never a word from that quarter since about third term.