Rensselaer Republican, Volume 17, Number 4, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 October 1884 — What Mr. Blaine Says. [ARTICLE]

What Mr. Blaine Says.

rFrom the New York Tribnne.l That Mr. Blaine refused to join the Know Nothing organization, though his associate in the Kennebiec Journal had done so, baa been established. The falsehood that he wrote articles for that journal in support of proscriptive ideas has been refuted by the voluntary declaration of the gentleman who did write them, and at that time held those ideas. What Mr. Blaine did think of the Know-Nothing movement, he has told the whole world In his history, which was written at a time when he had no expectation of becoming candidate lor office again, and which has been highly honored in Europe and in this country for its calm, impartial and candid treatment of public questions. In his first volume, page 117, Mr. Blaine said; “Thenceforward new alliances were rapidly

formed. In the South those Whigs who, though still unwilling to ptjofess an anti-slavery crezd. would not unite with the, Democrats, were reorganized under the name of the American party, with Humphrey Marshall, Henry Winter Davis, Horace Maynard and men of that class for leaders. This party was founder! on proscription of foreigners, and with special hostility to the Roman Catholic Church- it had. a fitful and feverish success, and In 1854-53,- under the nafne Of Know-Nothings, enrolled tens of thousands in secret lodges. But its creed was narrow,' its principles verellliberal, and irs methods of procedure boyish and undignified. The groat body ot thinking'men in the North saw that the real contest impending was against slavery and not against naturalization laws and ecclesiastical dogmas. The Know-Nothings, therefore, speedily disappeared.” It is not to be expected that the Democrats, in this extreme emerff'*>cy, will tell the truth about Mr. Blaine. Buo those citizens who wish to know his real opinions will be glad to have them thus deliberately frankly expressed by Mr. Blaine himself. It is a matter of record that he was among the earliest of “those thinking men in the North” who "saw that the real contest impending was against slavery," and threw himself with all his energy and youthful ardor into the organization of the Republican party in the verv year in which It is falsely asserted he was striving to keep the Know Nothing party alive. He left the Pennsylvania Institution for the Instruction of the Blind November Si, lah—after the a:tides were published in Maine which have been falsely attributed to him—and in the very next year, 1855. according to Gov. Kent, “he was a leading power in the councils of the Republican party.”