Rensselaer Republican, Volume 17, Number 1, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 September 1884 — Deceiving the Irish. [ARTICLE]

Deceiving the Irish.

The average Irishman is taught to believe that the. Republicanism of to-day is the successor of Knownothingism that the ruffian mobs of Louisville, St. Louis, and other American cities who mobbed the Irish forty years ago by some unexplained metamorphosis have converted themselves into the respectable and libertyloving men wto compose the rank and file of the Republican party. The truth in this regard is that this Knownothing story is clearly, calumniously false. What became of the Knownothlngs may be an open question. They may have gone to heaven or hades. I will not say that they went into the Democratic party; bnt I do say that they are not in the Republican party, for the party Is not composed of that kind of men. Ruffianism will assert Itself, and it does not assert itself in the Republican party. The Knownothing party was a Southern party, its home was in the slaveholding States. There were five Knownothing votes cast south of the Mason and Dixon line, for one vote cast in the Republican States of the North: vet for thirty years this infamous falsehood has been the false pretense on which the votes of Irishmen were obtained for the Democratic party. While parties have risen and fallen, while individuals have acted with regard to living issues, for thirty years, the preud place assigned to the Irishman has been a post beside the tombstone of the putrefying past, hugging the ghoetstory of Knownothingism. I find no fault with Democratic principles, these principles are mine; nor am I prepared to say that it is an Irishman’s duty to abandon the Democratic party and enter the Republican. What Ido say and shall keep saying is that he has the right to think, and that he must not be stigmatized for a thought or an act that runs counter to the Democratic party. That if any wish to secure his vote they must appeal to his reason, to his sense of right, to the manliness and honor of his character. But it is written, and the fiat has gone forth, the hour is at hand when his vote cannot be held by any claim in the nature of a chattel mortgage, nor by an appeal to his prejudices, nor by the vicious and calumnious bug-a-boo about Knownothingism.—* John Brennan, in the Io it a Times.